


We'll Stay Together 'Till We're Ghosts

by MajorEnglishEsquire



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Fallen Angels, Fallen Castiel, Flirting, Hurt Sam Winchester, M/M, Post-Season/Series 08 Finale, Separations, Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-08
Updated: 2013-10-08
Packaged: 2017-12-28 20:38:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 35,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/996425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MajorEnglishEsquire/pseuds/MajorEnglishEsquire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Takes place directly after <a href="http://supernaturalwiki.com/index.php?title=8.23_Sacrifice">08.23 Sacrifice</a>. Castiel has landed, surrounded by fallen angels. Kevin is running again. Sam is going to die unless Dean can get him in the damn car, but Sam won't budge if Crowley stays behind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We'll Stay Together 'Till We're Ghosts

**Author's Note:**

> Season 09 starts _tonight_ and that was my ultimate deadline for finally posting this fic. In the time I've been working on it, it's diverted wildly from all the spoilers we've had about the upcoming season so far. Thus, you can easily consider this as going AU from [08.23 Sacrifice](http://supernaturalwiki.com/index.php?title=8.23_Sacrifice).
> 
> Warnings for some violence and also for what could be considered pre-Sam/Crowley.
> 
> I do not own the rights to these characters, setting, show, etc. No harm is intended.

Kevin can't get a clear view of the sky from where he stands, but he can tell this isn't the Eta Aquariids. This isn't a good latitude for viewing, anyway and what's falling from the sky aren't simple, burning meteoroids, flaming out in the atmosphere. These are impacting against the earth's surface. These are making audible "ppfts" from what appears to be miles out.

The bunker is wailing behind him, a streak of red light strobes his silhouette onto the concrete. He leaves his bag in the doorway, so he doesn't lock himself out, and ascends to ground level for a better view. Up here, through the wind in the trees, there's the occasional ripping, searing sound and then another paff of impact. Nothing directly above him so far. Dean had said this was a safe place. The bunker itself doesn't even seem to trust that notion, what with the racket it's making. But, still, not a single celestial body lands near the area.

Celestial body. Holy shit. That strikes him. Celestial _bodies_.

Holy _shit_.

He falls back, scrambling, until his back knocks into the railing and he runs back down the stairs and inside, pulling his bag in, shutting the door tight.

Two options: Hide or seek.

If these are angels falling to the ground, that means something -- or some _one_ \-- just upturned and rattled out the contents of heaven. There are either going to be some very pissed off angels or some very wounded new mortals out there.

He could find out which. He could help them if they're in any shape to stand up after a fall like that. He's a prophet. All the angels have that programmed into them. They would know not to hurt him.

But if the angels have fallen and Dean and Sam have not yet closed off hell, or Sam _dies_ and they're unable to close off hell, well, then.

Then the armies of heaven and hell could very well clash on earth.

This is so, so very far above his pay grade.

"I don't get paid!" Kevin hears himself almost squeal. "I don't get paid for this shit! There are no scholarships for dodging rocket-propelled monsters!"

He'll hide, then. He'll hide until it's over. And then he'll call a cab out to the nearest gas station-- fuck it -- the nearest _mile-marker_. When the sky is clear, he'll book it to California, hole up and observe his uncle's place until he knows the coast is clear, and steal his cousin Evan's ID. People always talk about how he and Evan look alike. Kevin, Evan, shit; he might even manage to respond to the name.

He will toss the place for Evan's passport, grab any spare cash he can find, (leave a note _desperately apologizing_ ,) and get a one-way ticket to Melbourne. His uncle's wife's family is there, if nothing else. He might find them. Or he might just manage to disappear entirely.

He's never looked into the Australian university system. If he's really lucky, if he's done anything right in this life, he'll find a nice, sprawling campus, and an entrance essay that requires _under_ 500 words.

Kevin slides to the floor and patiently covers his ears. He waits for the alarms to fall silent.

«»

Castiel is in a clearing standing incredibly still.

Nothing streaks from the sky anymore. He has turned his eyes away from heaven and locked them on a nearby position to the southeast. The closest impact to him was there, right there, a little beyond where the trees closed off the south end of this patchy circle.

He can hear everything, but he can't hear anything. No hush of cars, no panicked human voices, no night owls or chirruping bugs. Even the wind has stopped to wait for the angel's next move.

The quiet stretches. Castiel can't decide if he should go to them, find this brother or sister and assess their damage. For they _will_ be alive. They will have lived to fulfill the Metatron's twisted needs. If he dropped them all to earth only to die on impact, he'd have no story to gain from it.

There is a low wail. It quiets and rises again. And again. And each time grows louder, wilder, more desperate. But it comes from the same place. Cas can't see into the darkness anymore. He doesn't think they'll be able to, either. But if they move forward, into the clearing, they'll see him.

Does he go forward?

Castiel looks down at his hands. Mud is clumped on the side of one hand, rotting old leaves sticking to it. He shakes it off.

(What do I do, Father?)

And stops the thought before it fully forms. He takes in, instead, the fresh wail rising from the trees.

One step becomes many. He steps forward, into the trees again. They're denser here. Squinting does not help. Widening his eyes helps more. He pauses, waiting for the wail to rise again, and in that time his eyes seem to grow more used to this degree of darkness. He can see more.

He can pick his way further into the trees and now follows the wail again. In it, anger mixed with sobs, breath breaking on the higher pitches; despair.

Castiel is not careful on another step and crashes through a low plant.

Her voice ceases.

"What is this?" she asks in the dark.

Castiel holds still and does not respond. He can't see her yet. He doubts she can see him yet, though her eyes have had longer to adjust to her location.

" _What is this?_ " she screeches. And again, "what _is_ this?!"

Cas doesn't understand the question.

She asks again twice more, increasingly frenetic, and is about to ask again when he asks, "What is what?"

She gasps for air. "Brother? Where are we? What has been done to us? What _is_ this?" She has no idea the emotion choking up her throat, no idea how in shock she is, how scared.

Castiel steps forward and finds her. She has clawed at her hair. She clutches it even now, mashing mud and leaves and grass into it. She pulls at it, hunching, folding her body over itself and feeling more than she's ever felt in places she's never even had before.

"Don't be frightened. I know where we are. Well. I know how to find out." He comes to kneel at her side. "We're alright. We'll be fine."

She hasn't looked up at him yet. He can't sense who she is and he wants to look into her eyes, see into her, see if he knows who she is, even through her new, human eyes. He reaches for her wrists and puts a thumb in each palm, loosening the claws, extricating her fingers from her stringy, dirt-caked brown hair.

She does look up and to his eyes, then. He focuses, squints. Widens his eyes because he has just learned that that works in the dark.

He can't see who she is.

"What is your name," Castiel asks.

"Dirachiel. I am Dirachiel."

(Angel of Revenge, she doesn't say.) And Castiel moves his hands from her wrists.

What he's feeling now, he's felt before. A low and sinking feeling that has feet. It draws him away from her. Repulsion. It was what he'd felt as a human once, outside of a building in Detroit, Michigan, cold seeping into his muscles. Knowing what was there, sucking the heat out of the world. Knowing it was angrier than him, feeling deeper than him. Full of more purpose and rage than him.

He can see, after a long minute, that she does not need a similar introduction.

The edges of her mouth spasm. On any other human they would look like disappointment and all-consuming sadness. On this face, they are a prelude to a storm.

"You," is all she says, without any stress or emphasis.

Cas rises to his feet and backs away.

From the ground at her side, extracted from the dirt and decay, she pulls an angel blade. The mud gives it up with a sucking sound.

«»

There's no use in screaming to the sky. No one's up there to listen anymore.

They're all down here.

Sam groans again, and his fingers come up to grip the fabric of Dean's sleeve. They let the sky come down and Sam rocks himself through another spasm of pain. Dean moves his hands around Sam's chest, his shoulders, his torso, holding his brother together. The next time he looks up, there are no more streaks lighting up the sky.

But there is a splash nearby. And another splash. The violent throes of a temper tantrum more than a drowning.

Whoever it is, they're dangerous and they're close. And they're probably angry. Scared and angry.

"Sam," Dean says, still looking away, towards the noise. "We gotta-- get up, man, we gotta get you in the car, c'mon."

"Ddd-ean," Sam forces past his teeth. "Crowley."

"Fuck Crowley. Hospital. We gotta get out of here before those things see us, Sam. We gotta get you-- we gotta get you to a hospital. That's what we can do right now."

Sam shakes his head, weak. "No--"

His protest is interrupted by a shout coming from back inside the church. Feeble as Sam, a voice only just rising into the audible range. _Don't leave me here, you can't leave me here, Sam. Sam, you can't leave me here..._

Dean hauls himself up and tries the same with Sam, tries to gather him up in his arms again, only enough to open the backseat and--

Sam gathers enough strength in one arm to shove Dean off of him. "Crowley," he requests again.

" _Sam_ \--"

"You have to, Dean, I have to," He falls heavily back against the car door. "I'll get in the car if you bring Crowley o--" he manages before his voice fails him. He puts all the rest of the energy he owns into shoving Dean further away and staying heavy and immovable against the passenger side.

Dean curses. He looks back out towards the lake. The figure stumbling out is all Swamp Thing, strings of vegetation and slumped, horribly. It heaves with the movement of air into its lungs, stumbles, and falls to the shore again.

Fuck.

Dean points at Sam, demands, "you _get in the car_ ," and turns to dart back into the old church.

Crowley heaves a breath of relief. "I can help, I swear, Winchester. I'll help. Let me come with you. Let me."

 _Let me_ , he says, _let me_ like nothing Dean's ever heard from him before. His tone is stripped of its coldness and command. No snark. No demand. Cajoling, now. He knows he's got the key to getting out of here and it's Sam. His usefulness to Sam. It's how he can serve, now, not about what he wants or needs. Pure self-preservation and an honest tinge of doubt. Like he's sure Dean's come in here to stab him before he goes.

"Help how?" Dean challenges.

"Anything," Crowley sighs. "I'll do whatever you say. Something's happened out there, hasn't it? I can feel it. I can feel them. Something collapsed. Something broke. You leave me here to die, you're leaving the key to the lock, aren't you? If nothing else, take me, get me out of here. I'll--"

"Don't have time for this," Dean goes to stomp back out.

Crowley finally flails in his chains. " _Witchcraft_ , Dean. Spells. I have spells. You want him better, I'll do it. You want me to knock him out, I'll do it. If you have the herbs I can stop what the spell's doing to him. DEAN," He shakes his head around, finally has Dean's back in full view.

"Don't leave me here. I can do this. Let me help Sam."

Dean turns and is in front of him, in his face in less time than a lightning strike. " _Help him_. How fucking HELP HIM," Dean basically screams in his face. "You've fucking killed him. This has fucking KILLED HIM."

"Give me a chance!" Crowley shouts back, "I know we're in the middle of nowhere, and what hospital can treat anything like this, anything like you've seen before and like they've _never_ seen? You know you have to let me come. You know you don't have a better chance of saving your brother."

"And why would _you_ wanna save him?" Dean hisses.

"HE'S MY ONLY WAY OUT," Crowley says, and is silent. He slumps into his chair and chains. "He did this to me. If he doesn't finish it. Sam. He's my only way out."

There's a noise that's been rising. It floats inside the church now. Shouting, wailing. There's screaming mixed in now. A rending of airways and a wordless, profound despair.

They're both looking to the stained glass that separates them from one of the fallen.

Sam is still outside. He won't get in the car if Crowley doesn't come. Or maybe if he waits long enough, Sam will think he's unlocking Crowley and bringing him out. Maybe Sam will get in the car and Dean can just rush out and blast them out of there at full speed.

He looks back up to Crowley. "Sandalwood, rue, cayenne, chickweed," Crowley says. "Audire verba. Adiuvare me panaces. Ut ab omni infernalium spirituum potestate--"

"What the hell are you babbl--"

"The herbs. The words to the spell. You can have them if you want them," Crowley kind of wavers. "But they're better performed by a witch. Or someone who can channel the power," the chains clink as he shrugs, indicating himself.

Dean looks back to the window that's still intact. The wailing falls off and rises again. It cuts off in a cough, a hack, and is replaced by screaming.

"Tell me what's happening out there," Crowley says. And Dean could almost _hear_ the 'please' tacked onto the end.

Dean doesn't say anything. He stands straight and walks around Crowley. Crowley doesn't fuss when he moves out of visual range. He doesn't turn; he just sinks into the chair again. Defeated.

Sam obviously had to reset the devil's trap. Something went down here. The chains once bolted and locked down are busted, the locks several feet away. Crowley's in a weaker set of chains and he's not struggling at all. From the spot he's in now, Dean can detect no sign that's he's struggled since he resettled.

Dean pulls the ring with all the keys for the padlocks out of his pocket. He finds the ones for the two chains remaining around Crowley.

He reaches around and unlocks them from behind the chair. He leaves the collar with the sigils locked around his throat. He leaves the cuffs on. They've got a lot of chain between them, a lot of range.

The screaming stops.

They're both very still.

"Tell me you didn't just leave Sam out there," Crowley says, his voice dipping closer to threatening than it's been throughout this whole, warped conversation.

"You're leaving the rest on," Dean puts the keys in his pants pockets instead of his coat. "Can you stand?" He circles the trap again to find a weak board. When he locates one, he crams his fingers between the wood planks and pulls until he hears a snap and the line of paint is broken.

Crowley tests his feet and tilts, but then stands at full height and turns to look square at Dean.

"Those _stay on_ ," Dean says again, pointing to the cuffs. Then he turns and marches back outside.

Sam is, of course, not fucking sitting. He's got the car door open, and he's slumped behind it, but he's not in the car, behind the safety of her metal, and the guy stumbling out of the lake is closing on him.

"IN," Dean barks and points at Sam.

Sam is wide-eyed. Shakes his head. Then his eyes skip back to the church door and Crowley emerging from it.

He sinks quietly back into the car, falls onto the seat. Pulls the door closed in front of him.

Dean gets to the trunk and pops it open quick, pulls out a shotgun and the backpack with the sachets of dried herbs.

After he slams the trunk closed again, Crowley is as close to the passenger side as the lake zombie swamp thing and he moves forward, levels his gun at the stranger.

"You gotta know what one of these is by now," he says to the fallen angel. "You've watched us enough. Had to. You know what'll happen if I pull this trigger."

The man staggers to a stop.

"What is this," he demands.

Dean steadies the shotgun with both hands and directs the barrel center-mass.

"Come any closer and you'll find out."

"WHAT IS THIS," he screams.

Holy shit. They have no idea what's just happened to them. Dean hesitates. Then lowers the gun. He barrels forward, shoves a shoulder into the man and propels him as far away as possible. He stumbles back over a log of driftwood and falls onto his back, in the water again.

Dean turns and runs back to the car.

"In," he demands of Crowley, and Crowley complies easily, opening the front passenger-side door and slipping into the car.

Dean books it around the front and gets in, starts her up, and reverses at speed, gravel spitting everywhere. The fallen man hasn't recovered yet. They can hear his wordless screaming in the car now. He is reaching up from the banks, clawing at the air. He doesn't know what it is to function in that body. That _human_ body.

Dean gets the Impala spun around and headed back out towards the road. He snaps on the hi-beams just in time to see a woman, her back _still smoking_ , stumble out from the trees and into their path. He avoids her with a jolting skid to the left and makes it back out onto the asphalt in another minute.

Crowley is already digging through the bag he'd thrown down on the seat. He doesn't say a word, just keeps pulling little cloth bags out and smelling the contents. Some he drops in his lap, others he tosses back in.

Dean darts an eye up from the road to see Sam in the back seat, chest rising in arrhythmic breaths, eyes blinking back pain.

He sees Crowley shake his head, but hears no curse, no snide remark.

"None of them are labeled," falls out of his mouth. Dean stops himself before he can add, 'sorry.'

Crowley doesn't say anything, just tosses aside a stray bundle of sage.

They're flying back west to 81. Just before they get to turning south in Yankton, Crowley seems to have found everything he needs. He turns and sighs. Says, "scoot, Sam," and he starts hefting himself over into the back seat.

"Whoa-hey," Dean starts to protest.

"Just drive," Crowley says.

At one point he demands Dean's lighter. Dean can't help but think there's nothing stopping him from working some kind of mojo that'll send them sailing off the bridge into the river before they even manage to cross down into Nebraska. But nothing happens except some murmured words and the smell of burning herbs. Dean watches sporadically in the rear-view mirror as Crowley reaches over and rolls the back window open a crack to let out the smoke. When he pulls back, he keeps a hand on Sam's chest and repeats the Latin over.

Sam hasn't gasped in pain for a while. Another look in the mirror and he's not creased and crazed, either. He just looks wiped out and tired. Crowley runs through the whole incantation a third and fourth time.

The glow is receding from every part of Sam.

There's an hour of that. The only sounds Crowley speaking in a low tone; the road flying by under the tires.

Over the crops and staggering out of the fields come men and women. They slump towards sources of light or maybe they're just looking for arteries, roads. Maybe each other. Sometimes they just stand there. The car passes them and they can hear screaming as they whip by.

Once they pass a small jam of a few north-bound cars stopped and honking at a lost woman who just stands in the road in front of the headlights and shouts and slams her fists bloody on the hood of a car.

They don't stop for anything for as long as they can.

Sam falls asleep at some point and Crowley tosses burnt stems out the window and rolls it back up.

He reaches back over the seat for the bag of herbs and begins digging again. In a few more miles Dean looks back up from the road to see that Crowley has removed the bandage on Sam's arm and is pressing leaves into the black of a wound. He eventually does the same with Sam's palms.

Dean waits to pull off into the relative civility of Columbus for gas. For once, he picks a well-lit station with working CCTV behind the counter and businessmen stopping in for their morning coffee. Nothing looks too disturbed. It doesn't seem like any fallen angels have wandered this far into humanity. Yet.

He buys a new bandage for Sam and some bottles of water. Pays for the gas in cash. Grabs napkins from the nacho-and-donut counter. Back at the car, Crowley is still settled in silently, across the seat from Sam.

Dean considers taking the cuffs off him, but only opens the door and hands over the water and stuff. Crowley cleans the blood off his face while Dean pumps the gas.

He opens the window again and hands the old bandages and bloody paper off through so Dean can dump it all in the trash, and then they're on their way again.

As they leave town, back into the darkness before sunrise, back down towards Kansas, they see, in a store parking lot, that there's a child crawling the side of a big-rig. He screams, claws at the window. The driver inside is wide-eyed, just watching.

The back window is still down and the words whip into the car with the cold morning air. _What is this?_

«»

Cas can't handle his second encounter, this one with a brother.

After Hayayel is dead, Cas falls back against a tree and the sobs burst from his chest, the tears fall down onto his knees, before he even remembers what it is that's happening to him. He's felt grief before, but in humans, there's nothing to hold back the physical manifestation of it. It builds and builds until it feels like your heart is drowning in it. Sometimes you get angry, then. Most the time, you grow sad. Sometimes it sinks you, like it's sunk him here to the ground.

There was no confusion in his brother. True to his nature, he knew exactly where he was, what was going on. He had been a gentle guide to the humans who sought his help before. He knew what was happening and he knew who Castiel was. And he was angry. Vicious, like Dirachiel had been.

He'd won her sword and he'd won Hayayel's just now.

Before he'd sought out the road, he went back to where he had landed. His own blade was nowhere to be found, he'd used up most the battery on his phone illuminating the area, looking for it. He couldn't feel it anymore. It could have been lost in the fall, or amongst the leaves and mud. Or Metatron may still have it.

These two blades are his, now. He will need them to continue to defend himself.

He doesn't want them. He thinks he says as much through his sobs. He says nonsense when he's crying. He says heartbreaking things that he didn't know he was thinking and they make him cry harder and make him moan in agony and not be able to catch his breath.

He pulls his sodden coat tight around himself and chokes on more nonsense words that make him feel awful. That tell his own tales of how awful he is.

If he were less awful, he would have given his sister or brother life. He would have knelt before them and put his throat to their blades.

But the instinct towards self preservation is writ large inside of humans. He could do nothing but turn on the edges of blows, parry, swing out of the way, and slice down when he had the clear chance at bared flesh. His newly-human brethren did not have the advantage of knowing when human bones and flesh give. They didn't know what it was like not to have more force behind their fists. Dirachiel's moves had included some fatal pauses where she attempted to hold out a hand and will Castiel back, or will her blade back into her own hand. They left her fingers spasming in the air, raw nothingness behind the movement where Power and Righteousness and Immortal Will used to emanate.

They'd both screamed until the blood bubbled out of their throats and left them empty.

Cas coughs on spit and the crying tapers off and he's exhausted.

He must aim for the veins, he knows.

He must empty the veins of those who would kill him. He must walk the veins of the land. He will eventually spill out into the streets of houses and businesses. He will find someone human who will know where he must go. Perhaps, in time, he will find another of the fallen who can come to trust him. One he doesn't have to kill in order to survive himself.

He did not fall to earth ignorant. He has been here before and, better, been here as a man. He was with Daphne and he navigated society as a nearly-normal, mortal man. He was with the Winchesters and he navigated around society, both without his powers and with them. He observed. He practiced. He has been a warrior and he has played roles like hunters in fake suits and he has made somewhat successful attempts to act as an average human.

What's important right now is the fact that he's exposed. He is exposed out here to the elements as long as he has no shelter. He is exposed to his brethren, some of whom will know who he is on sight and attempt to kill him. He must assume they are all as armed as those he's met so far.

He must assume he is far from the Winchesters and hunted.

What is the opposite of this?

To know where he is; to be on a road, on his way to Kansas. To look like no one in particular. To hide himself from fallen angels and from hunters who will soon know what has happened and would just as soon strike him down for being other-than-human. A potential threat.

He pulls the sleeve of his suit jacket out from underneath the trench coat sleeve. It's clean and dry enough to make a difference in wiping off his face. He stands and walks out from under the tree. Washes his hands in the rain.

The event took place an hour or more before. He's been looking for a road for that long and judging by the hush of sound, he's not far from one. It's possible that there are others who fell this way that have already met the cars along this road. He must hope that they haven't. He must hope that he can get a ride somewhere. He must keep calling Dean's number and hope for him to pick up.

He must hope he's on the right continent.

«»

Kevin is in Phillipsburg by dawn and he wishes he hadn't thrown so much cash at the taxi driver because he only has just enough for a bus ticket. He doesn't have enough for the seriously shady vending machine out in front of the transportation center or even a coffee at the nearest diner. 

Breakfast comes out of the taped-up, half-finished bag of Doritos he'd pilfered from the bunker.

The Doritos will probably not be missed. The big, fuck-off knife he stole off of Dean's wall might.

He's shaking. He doesn't need the coffee. He is all too awake for this entire world right now.

His fingers crunch more of the chips than he gets to his mouth.

Three dirty, wailing women had crossed their path on the 45 minute ride. The driver must have encountered some of them before he even got there because his reaction to each of them was to rev it and go around them. It was like _Shaun of the Dead_ if the zombies had been able to speak. They rushed up, pounded muddy hands on the windows and just looked lost.

The most awkward thing had to be how neither of them _talked about it_ on the way there. The guy just looked freaked and kept on driving.

They definitely didn't discuss how the third one had seen him, _really seen Kevin_ through the tint-less windshield, and had stopped shouting. Had stepped back and had clearly, absolutely _known_ him.

So, he's guessing that even with Heaven out of commission, his prophet status is still good.

Kevin sits huddled against the brick wall, alone, for an hour. He's eventually glad he didn't have enough money for the diner because he watches while a man stumbles up to it and starts banging on the glass. He finds a door and barges in and demands to know something. Kevin can't hear what it is from all the way over here, but he goes inside the transportation center to use the bathroom (huddle in a stall) until he hears the siren of a cop car.

When he finally goes back outside, there are two more people with bags, waiting for the same bus. They don't nod at each other in solidarity as wanderers or anything. Instead, they just keep watching while the deputy or whoever struggles to get the handcuffed man into the back of his county vehicle.

Kevin puts on a show of staring in wonder like he has no idea what's going on. When the cop car drives off, it's to the muffled shouting from the fallen angel in the back.

Everyone in the diner goes back to their food. The travelers go back to waiting for the bus in silence.

And on the opposite street corner, a woman shakes herself off. Straightens herself. Carefully observes every person she can see. Every human she can see.

Kevin pulls the top of his hoodie tight over his head and pulls out his old, cracked, dead cell phone and pretends to play with it.

She is one of the fallen angels. She just has her wits about her. She's probably like Castiel or the Metatron or something. She's probably spent some time here and knows what she ought to be doing. That she should be calm and she will go about the business of trying to fit in with her wide eyes and her flat voice. She's got a long skirt on. She's dressed like a hippie with the posture of a soldier.

She's going to freak people right out. But she might make it past the door, at least. She might find her way somewhere.

Kevin has a brief fantasy of pulling her over by the hand. She will know who he is. She will follow him. They'll get onto the bus and he'll...

What? Drop her off in California with a sign around her neck that says "free to a good home"?

He has no money, he reminds himself. He almost didn't have enough to get on this bus himself.

He watches her have an awkward encounter with someone on the street. They seem to have a polite exchange from afar, but as the man walks on with his dog, he shakes his head and checks over his shoulder.

Then he realizes they'll all end up homeless or something. They'll have nothing to their names. No records. No place for shelter.

He really does almost go to her, then. He wants to tell her to at least check her pockets. Money is the key to everything. If she has a dollar in her pocket she can maybe get a sandwich or something.

And then, again, who the fuck is he? He's not about to mother hen a bunch of fallen angels. Heavenly warriors. Not about to tell them to hydrate and stay out of the rain and it's hard for full grown fucking adults to get jobs these days. How the hell will these weirdos get anywhere?

He destroys a thumbnail chewing on it and holding himself back from her sweeping survey of every human in the vicinity.

There's no reason to feel like he has any part in this. None whatsoever. He was dragged into this by some prophet, holy, bible, god, angels, demons, whatever bullshit. He has an uncle who he thinks is maybe a Buddhist and he knows one of his cousins went full Mormon for her husband but other than that, he never concerned himself with religion in his life. This is all fucking fairy tales come alive and if the rest of the world can call the police on a bunch of rabid freaks and have them hauled away and go on with the rest of their day, then so can he.

He left the tablets in the bunker. He left the rest of his shit on Garth's boat. He he's got a bag, some loose change, a knife to protect himself. A little box of raisins and a crumbly bag of corn chips. He's got a change of jeans and another shirt. A can of red spray paint and a hex bag Sam made for him. He's got the promise of the next 20-plus hours of his life on a bus. He's got nothing to do with this.

He's also, to his surprise, got a book of matches in his pocket. He'd forgotten about that. So when one of the other guys waiting for the bus with him asks if he's got a light, he provides one. The guy offers to share his cigarettes.

Why not? He thinks, and starts the next leg of his frantic, moronic delinquency with a menthol Camel before the bus finally pulls up.

«»

The bunker shuts up tight. Real tight. So tight that Dean can't hear the blaring alarms until he's descended the stairs and is on the point of unlocking their front door. He pauses and listens. Then cracks it open.

Lights, sirens, alarms, every cacophony you'd expect out of a full-blown thermonuclear incident is wailing out from inside. He tries to shout down the hall for Kevin but he can't even hear _himself_ in all this noise.

He closes the front door back up.

Above him, at the top of the stairs, Crowley's come out of the car and is looking down at him with interest.

Dean wavers for a minute, then tells him. "Wait there."

He turns and goes into the bunker, letting the door fall shut behind him, closing him in with all the racket.

He hunches his shoulders up and grinds his teeth and covers his ears.

Seriously, what the fuck?

Where the hall opens up to the stairs and the large rooms below, there's even more light. Strobes and reds everywhere. He goes to the electrical panel and tries to shut everything down but nothing budges.

He goes down the stairs, still covering his ears as best he can and flips every switch he can find. The labels have all faded and decayed. He can't tell what anything is. Most things tend to be useless, as far as he can see. Others light up distant buttons and switches on other panels or on the wall. There are a few Big Red Buttons and he can't decide whether or not to push them. Finally he gets to an old comms station with a microphone. Powering down all the lights available turns off each of the alarms in turn. The wailing subsides in bursts until full blown silence knocks into him and he feels his jaw ease, painfully.

The lights have all come back down, too, except for blinking indicators on the big war room table.

It looks as if nothing was ever labeled there. So those red lights can stay on forever; he'll never know what they mean.

He shouts for Kevin again. Twice. Then he goes looking while shouting. Still nothing. All that's left of him is a bunch of notes and the bunker key.

Dean does another quick circle of all the common rooms and dorms and bathrooms.

Then he just shakes his head and heads back up top.

No blood along the way. No signs of distress. Not even a fucking note.

Yet another man overboard. That leaves both Kevin and Garth in the wind.

And, Dean pauses at the point of opening the front door again.  
And Cas.

Oh, holy fuck.

Acid rises in him. He needs a minute he doesn't deserve and that he'll never have. He left Sam outside with the King of fucking Hell.

He can easily imagine Cas-- with.  
With two stumps of bones spider-legging out of his back, raw and black and the feathers missing. No matter he never saw the feathers of Castiel's wings in the first place. No matter that all the fallen angels they've come across in the early morning were whole and complete. Wild, but unscathed. Aside from the burning during descent and the smoking afterward, no indication at all that they'd had extra limbs. He sees it anyway. He sees Cas curled up next to another lake bed, bleeding and in pain.

Or maybe it was faster than that. Maybe nobody stopped Cas before Cas completed his tablet spell work. Dean was there to stop Sam from sacrificing himself to the spell. No one.

No one.  
No one was there for Cas.

Dean wasn't there for Cas again.  
He knows, in this moment. He knows right now. That he did this to Cas again.

That if he never sees--

Dean opens the door to the bunker and ascends the stairs.

"This is interesting," Crowley says, eyebrows only slightly raised.

It doesn't occur to Dean until then that he's not even sure if Crowley will be able to enter. Or if he'll make the alarms sound again.

He doesn't pay Crowley any mind. He goes to the passenger side and looks through the window at Sam. He's in the same place he was before, asleep. The sun is rising and everything is lightening, including Sam's pale, white skin.

Dean goes around to get some essentials out of the trunk. He uses this bag to go down and prop the door open, then goes back up and circles the car.

Crowley is already there, and the both of them pull Sam out and heft him up.

"Fuck," burbles out of Sam's mouth. "I can-- I can walk. I can do it on my own."

"Sure. We know," Dean rolls his eyes.

They enter the bunker and Dean pauses, expecting to hear alarms again. Nothing.

He shakes his head and they move back down into the bunker.

"Ugh." Crowley kind of hisses when they get to the main floor. There are big metal sigils in the floor and who knows what else in the walls.

"I'll take him," Dean says and attempts to pull all of Sam's weight to himself.

Crowley only straightens and hauls more of Sam's weight on his own side. They cross the floor without him getting stuck anywhere and this seems to surprise even Crowley.

Well, that's bad news or good news. Either Crowley's so de-demoned that he's not really a threat anymore or he's just de-demoned enough to make traps and sigils ineffective. Dean won't really know until he gets him back in a full trap.

Dean's got an idea on that point. But first they navigate all of Sam's gigantic limbs into his room and onto his bed.

Crowley manages to disappear in the blink of an eye as Dean's situating Sam, peeling his blood-caked shirt off. Sam manages to open his eyes long enough to participate in changing his clothes. When he falls back onto the bed, though, he's really, _really_ down.

Dean tries shaking him. "Sam. Sammy."

"Leave it," Crowley steps in and pretty much edges Dean out of the way. "You can clean him up after I get rid of the bleeding," he says as he sets up a bowl and some herbs on Sam's nightstand. "You'd best have a better stock of feverfew somewhere. I can't blink myself out for it until you take the damn chains off."

Dean just glares at the back of his head.

Crowley turns.

"Well?"

" _What_."

"Feverfew," he says again and waits. "Or just stand there and be bloody _useless_ while your brother dies. I'll cobble something together. YOU," he points at Dean, "go back outside and consecrate a knife before the moon sets."

Dean doesn't move.

"Go." Crowley says again. Doesn't command. Just says it.

Dean finds himself outside four minutes later with a bowl full of holy water, cleansing and speaking a blessing over one of their silver knives.

For the next hour, he stands back in the doorway and watches Crowley work. Spells pour out of him like he's having a conversation with Sam, like he's actually conscious and they're just shooting the shit in Latin.

How fucking easy did they get off? He just stands there imagining how little effort it must have taken Crowley to come after all their old... friends. Friends? That's not the right word. Uncomfortably enough, he wants to just call them 'victims.' Like they were all the Winchesters' victims before they were Crowley's.

How much did Crowley really delegate out to incompetent, lower demons?

Was that his problem? That normally the delegating got done down to him and all the lesser demons were just running around like children? It makes sense. Crowley must have jumped the ranks. The reason they got one over on him was because he couldn't trust the underlings who the hunters had already been tossing around for years. He was King of Cannon Fodder.

Twice Crowley has to catch what he's burning over Sam's body from fumbling with the chains. Dean waits for another pause before he comes forward, silent, to take off the cuffs.

Crowley only spares him a glance. The collar around his neck stays locked in place.

Dean eventually goes to clean his own self up. He gets the rest of the stuff out of the car and notices how much of it is missing. In his hurry to leave the area, he'd left all of Sam's stuff back in the church, by the broken chains and the altar.

Ruby's knife. Shit. One of their greatest assets and he left it two states and a minimum of four hours away.

He keeps a knife of similar size and shape in his back pocket. If it comes down to it, he wants Crowley to believe he's still got a viable weapon at hand.

Then he remembers.

An angel blade. They'd taken one off Crowley when they first picked him up at the old Singer Scrap Yard.

He digs for it all over the place and doesn't come up with it. Shit. Fuck. Crowley could be in there with it now--

No. Sam had driven them to the church.

Dean goes and digs under the front seat. It's there, wrapped in Crowley's overcoat.

It's been a really long fucking night. With the adrenaline of this mini-crisis ebbing away fast, he realizes how muddy his jeans are. How awful he feels. How drained.

(At least he's got a shelter to get back into. Cas has nothin--)

Dean shuts up the car and dumps everything down in the main room.

«»

There's enough power left on Castiel's phone to call one, maybe two more times. It will likely make no difference.

Dean's phone number, he knows, is not the most recent, but it's the only number he's got for him. The messaging function beeps wordlessly to the voicemail box when he calls it.

He hangs up and tries Sam one more time. That number at least rings through before, "This is Sam, leave your name and number. Or you can text me." Beeeep.

"Me again," Cas says. "Please, if either of you get this. I'm positive of where I am now: It's Saskatoon. I'm not sure --" Cas licks his lips. "I'm heading south. It will take me a while. I think my phone is about to die. But tell me where you are, anyway. Leave me a message. If I don't hear from you, if I can't get my phone to turn back on, I'm heading to Kansas. I will meet you there." He looks up again, old habit. " _Please_. Tell me you got this. I-- I don't have much money, I-- I'm not sure--"

"To re-record your message, press one now," the automated woman interrupts.

Cas really hates her.

He has some coins in his pockets. American money. He knows countries are touchy about their currency.

It took him a long time to walk into town. He's tired, cold, hungry. Doesn't know that he has much of a choice.

He dragged his overcoat off when he started seeing people. Folded the bloody front in and draped it over his arm. He didn't want to alarm anyone, didn't want to look stranger than he already did.

It was hard to keep the swords from clinking together inside the pockets. He had to fold the fabric just right and tuck it against his front.

And now he's in front of a shopping center.

 _Centre_ , actually, according to the signage.

His hair is as unruffled as he could manage to make it in the reflection of a storefront window. He looks as calm as he's going to get.

He now has very limited options.

Two angel blades are, technically, superfluous. They are useful and he is accustomed to their weight which is a decided bonus in a fight. They are also imbued with magic enough to destroy other things which might prey upon him. Those that still have their powers. Demons, if Sam wasn't able to rid the world of them last night.

Things would have shifted, though. He is sure that, even without being tied to the power of the angelic host, he still would have felt if that had come to pass.

He's pretty sure Dean stopped him.  
Dean would have saved Sam. No doubt about that.

So he could sell one of the blades. The metal is precious. Pure, consecrated silver on the outer layers; an indestructible metal humans have yet to manufacture or name on the inside. He would have to clean them better, get the last of the blood off.

He could get a good price for one if he found the right place.

But nothing here seems to be the right place. There is a garage where men are working on cars, beer and wine stores, restaurants, a clinic. Nothing like a pawn shop or sporting outlet. Perhaps, if he walked further...

But when will it get dark? And how much hungrier, how much _colder_ will he be by then?

There is a thrift shop, people bustling in and out. Through the window he sees lines and lines of clothing racks, some furniture, books, old electronics, tableware. He can only spot two people who are obviously employees.

He straightens up and walks in with confidence like everyone else.

Misdirection or should he attempt to remain unseen?

Castiel decides to approach one of the employees, an older woman, graying. He keeps his tan coat held close, pastes on a smile as far as he can manage.

"Excuse me. Do you have any-- er. Books?"

She isn't very cheerful so Cas feels like he can drop the smile. She walks to the side and points him in the right direction. He confirms, pointing that way.

"Yes, right over there," she says, "end of the aisle."

He proceeds towards the books and waits until her attention is completely absorbed in another direction before he heads for the electronics.

He looks through boxes of loose, wired things but nothing looks like the phone charger that Sam keeps for him. He'd never exactly _needed_ to charge the phone before. It was always simply powered up.

Like him.

He gives up on the charger and keeps an eye on the other patrons and employees while he goes through the clothes. The jackets, first. There's a jacket the same color as his, only shorter and wider. It has a flannel liner inside, though, and will be warm.

It also has no bloodstains. He inspects it as if to purchase it, then, when no one is near, he puts his own coat on the hanger, pulls everything out of the pockets, and puts it into the new coat. He drapes it over his arm like before. It's bulkier but no one should notice. He leaves Jimmy's old coat there, black and red in spots, drooping on its new hanger. Ragged and pathetic looking, like Cas feels.

He manages a similar switch with some boots. These ones are more sturdy, but dark brown instead of black. He can't remain much longer since he's not going to purchase anything. He keeps watching for people who might suspect him but everyone is buried in their own business. He manages to yank a long-sleeved shirt straight off the hanger and pull it under the drape of the jacket in one motion. It looks as if it will fit well enough and he will need to replace his white shirt soon.

Cas does one more circuit of the store. He stops in front of the belts and purses. He unzips some of the bags and digs into them, hoping for loose change or bills but finds nothing. Then he simply leaves, as if he has every right to, as if he knows what he's doing, as if these shoes were on his feet the whole time.

Outside, he checks his phone. Nothing new. The battery symbol is still red.

The Burger King across the street mocks him. It's terrible. There's even this burger smell on the air and his stomach is furious, aching to be fed.

There are different kinds of dining establishments. Sometimes Dean would take his car through a drive-thru and order food and they would hand it to him after he paid and then Cas would have to hold the bag closed very tight unless Dean was hungry. There was no eating in the car unless Dean was the one who was hungry. Sometimes.

When he didn't go through the drive-thru, he'd go to the counter, inside, and pay money while ordering food.

But in diners, where people served you, you could eat first and then they brought you a sheet of paper and you would pay them for what you had already eaten. So he simply needed to find a place with wait staff so that he could sit down and eat and then before they brought the paper he would leave.

No doubt it was against the law but, truly, they set themselves up for it. If they were more cautious, they would charge you up front.

Castiel decides this is a good plan and walks towards more of the shops to find a place with waiters milling about inside. He rejects many of them for having only one point of entrance and egress. All of them bunched up next to each other in the shopping center only have the one door up front.

Others, stand-alone dining establishments, seem to have front and side doors. Most of them are the kind with counters, though. Fast food. He does want the food fast, but being able to get away is more important.

He shrugs on his new coat, straightens himself out again, and prepares to look respectable in order to commit his first dine-n-dash.

«»

Considering the amount of times Dean's drifted by Sam's door holding a glass of whiskey in various levels of emptiness, Crowley isn't quite sure how much he's had to drink. Functional alcoholic he may be, but sleep would serve the moron better than intoxication.

He trusts that this bunker is quite well protected. He honestly does. Not a single source he tapped had ever honed in on the brutes when he was trying to root them out of hiding. He could contact them but getting hands on them was impossible. It had been like they had disappeared.

But he didn't have Abaddon as a resource. He didn't know what powers were at her disposal. The implication was that she'd been around for a while. She had seemed familiar with Sam, at least.

Anyway, he'd prefer two sober, functional Winchesters and basically what he has is a half. And it's the short one. Fantastic.

He's done with all the witching he's got to do right now. Some of it will have to be patched up and redone progressively until it sinks into Sam's skin and holds him together properly. It will form around him and work better, given repetition, and practice on Crowley's part.

Fixing things isn't something Crowley is used to.

He sets everything aside and sits back in the spare chair for a while, restraints still clinking when he shifts.

Dean floats back after a time and looks disturbed that Crowley's taking a break on the job.

"What?" he shrugs under the glare.

"You're supposed to be _fixing_ him."

"Fixed as he's gonna get for now," Crowley waves.

"You're kidding. He looks _dead_ ," Dean moves further into the room and his hand lands on Sam's ankle, over his jeans. He must be able to feel Sam's still alive but he glares at Crowley more, anyway.

"There's only so much can be done at once. And this is," Crowley gestures over all of Sam in general, "very temporary. You're going to require a more permanent solution."

"Alright, like what?"

"Uggh." Crowley groans and settles back some more, crosses his arms over his chest. "Must've spent a lot of time doing this damage to himself. You'll have to reverse it-- whatever it is he did. It took its time soaking into him. You'll have to pull it out again."

"Pull _what_ out?"

Crowley lets his head loll back on the chair. "Look, I don't know what happened to him, remember? You've spent the past months keeping that information _away from me_. I've no idea what he did to himself. What _you_ did to try and make the whole thing-- the whole spell work. I don't know what shuts down hell. I don't know what he went through."

Dean rubs his head, sets his glass down on the floor between his feet and sits on the end of Sam's bed. They're conversing in a natural tone, at a regular volume. Nothing stirs Sam. Dean keeps a hand on his leg because otherwise it's like he's not even in the room. He needs to keep his cool and figure this out... _with_ Crowley. Like it or not, he knows things. And Dean suspects that he had to come along with them, had no other choice. He might not have anywhere else to go if the de-demonizing process took enough mojo out of him.

"We killed your hellhound," he says.

"I'm aware. Still cross about it, I'll remind you. S'cruel. To just up and kill a man's dog."

"It was the first task. The second was to retrieve a soul from hell, the third was to cure a demon," he finger-guns Crowley, *pe-kew,* and reaches back down for his drink.

"That's all. Animal cruelty, a bit of a trip through hell--"

"Through purgatory. To get to hell. And purgatory again. Carried Bobby back under his skin."

Dean can tell another dig was gonna come out of him, but at the reminder, for some reason, Crowley's eyes skitter away.

Dean has to tighten his jaw, too. Has to remind himself that a constructive conversation is supposed to be going on here. Because what the fuck? Seriously. This bastard threw Bobby in a dungeon for who knows how long when he should have been up in heaven reunited with his wife, or whatever. How had Crowley even snagged him? And to what fucking end, exactly?

The fire in him dies as fast as it flares up.

That was before. That was back when nothing had changed. They may not have shuttered hell but they'd _changed_ a whole lot of things in a matter of days.

Crowley's plans from a few days ago-- shit. _Their_ plans from a few days ago. All of it's moot. They can't shut down hell, not at the price of Sam's life.

At some point they'll have to discuss if Crowley's even got a kingdom to go back to. Dean just doesn't want to watch him flex his powers quite yet.

"What else?" he prompts. "There were the tasks. Were there rituals to complete after?"

"Words to say. And after each one, Sam got weaker. Until he was stumbling around. He'd get direction, we'd, uh. Get a lead. On one of the tasks and he'd feel better for a while. He'd look better, too. And then. There was you."

"He just got weaker? What were the words?"

Dean gets up and digs through Sam's discarded jacket for the scribblings on the chants that ended each task. When he finds them, bloodstained and wrinkled, he hands the words over.

Crowley blinks over them for a minute.

"Enochian. Your bird couldn't do anything about him?" Crowley indicates Sam.

"Cas said there wasn't anything he could do. That Sam was... damaged. In ways he couldn't heal."

"Damaged or changed?"

Dean narrows his eyes. "I. Which? Why? Why does it matter?"

Crowley ponders for a moment. "If this spell essentially consumed the caster," he scratches his chin, thinking, "maybe it was just ripping up his insides. Could be he needs hospital. Could be there's nothing to be done for him except glue him together at the end of each day."

"Then get to gluing," Dean demands.

Crowley puts up his hands, gives the paper back. "I have -- really, _really_ \-- done all I can for now. There's nothing else."

"So you stick to him, hold the pieces together."

Crowley sighs. "I have another theory."

Dean empties his glass, waits.

"If it were change -- and that would be optimistic, but, if it were _change_ not damage. I have an idea what the change might have been. Y'see, you have enough incompetent putzes working for you, you're bound to get a mouthful of demon blood ripping their tiny heads off on occasion."

"Gross."

"Well. I also got a mouthful of your brother--"

Dean snickers lightly.

"You're clearly all of twelve years old, so I'll make this as simple as I can for you," he glares at Dean until he's made it clear he's listening. "That didn't taste like demon blood. And your brother should be brimming with the stuff. Equal parts human and Azazel. Now, it could be that getting raised from the pit cleaned him up but then he wouldn't taste of a hint of damnation. He does. But only just."

"Hold on. You're saying it was cleaning the--" Dean's eyes go wide as he replays a memory for himself. "Holy shit."

"What."

"He said it himself, uh. In the hotel. Before we met that dick, Metatron."

" _Metatron_ ," Crowley repeats, disbelieving.

"Yeah, well, he said it. He said he thought the tasks were _purifying_ him. His skin would light up and he thought he was being made clean enough to do the trials."

" _The_ Metatron," Crowley says again.

"No, Sam said he thought that."

"I mean, you _met_ the Scribe?"

"You did, too. He kicked your ass and got us Kevin back."

Crowley shakes his head as if to clear it. "No."

"Yeah. And he. Well. He lied, he told us. He told us about finishing the last task but he didn't tell us it would kill Sam. Gave Cas a line like that, too, only--"

Dean's jaw clenches. He looks down into his empty glass.

"Castiel tried to _use_ the angel tablet."

"I'm guessing he did. I'm guessing he made it further than we did. 'Cause. Well. You know."

"All those angels. It sent them to earth," Crowley gets it now.

"It was supposed to lock them all in, but..." Dean trails off again. When he looks up, it's to see Crowley frowning.

"So. Just to be clear. You not only failed at swatting down the hornet's nest of hell, you left it in chaos without a ruler," here he gestures to himself. "You managed to let Cas dissolve the only major army that could stand in opposition to us. And," he waves a hand as if it's just some annoyance that happens every day, "need I mention you also let a demonic Knight off the leash. Am I missing anything here?"

They stare at each other for a while, privately going over the horror that's likely in store for them.

"You didn't, by any chance, decide to round out your destruction of every possible realm by leaving another doorway to purgatory open, did you? Because that would really just complete the scene I think."

Dean rises and leaves. Says, as he's going, "you stay there."

"You couldn't _pay me_ to leave this bunker, mate."

«»

After he leaves Crowley with Sam, Dean stops drinking.

Things had changed. _Changed_ , yes. He had understood that. Now he's flat-out sickened by how much sheer damage has been done.

Whatever Naomi had been trying to warn Cas about, he'd obviously not believed her. He'd been conned by Metatron and now, what the hell is the endgame? What did that dick _do_ , exactly? What had been the point of it?

He's turned on the television to see the news twice, and briefly. Chaos doesn't exactly reign but it's certainly gumming up the works and he doesn't want to see that. Doesn't want to think about how many of them have landed on earth, crazed and confused. How many of them might have died on impact or been killed not knowing what cars were or how to swim to shore.

But the more sober he gets, the more he knows Crowley isn't completely right. The angels hadn't been standing up against hell. That had been the humans all along. All heaven ever did was stand up with hell in demanding a final showdown. They wanted the apocalypse, the end of humanity, as much as demons always seemed to.

The hunters of the world still stand between the demons and the rest of humanity, just like always.

As for the angels. Well. If they're all completely powered down and human, they're a part of the team now. And they know what's really out there. Maybe, for once, they really will stand against the forces of hell. Maybe they'll have to.

Still, Abaddon is a problem. And Crowley himself. And Sam.

Sam.

Dean feeds himself. Just a sandwich, just to soak up the alcohol and keep him going. He turns on the coffeemaker and gets some caffeine into himself, too. He's been up a long time, but Sam is still out. Sam is his priority. Pulling him back from the brink of death. Reversing what the trials did.

Or maybe finishing it, depending.

He's got a quarter sandwich still hanging out of his mouth as he enters the library. Chews and plucks down books in turn.

(He remembers Bobby. _"Here, lemme look it up in my demon detox manual. Oh wait! No one ever wrote one."_ )

There are some books on blood binding, and blood spells, the strength and anatomy of demons.

But after cruising through them, and after a couple cups of coffee, he knows he has to talk to Crowley again.

Crowley is back at it, this time. He's over Sam chanting some "ominum hominum" stuff and running through probably _all_ of the goddamn dried sage.

He waits for Crowley to get to a stopping point. Sam doesn't look any better. He looks frozen and haggard, like he fell down exhausted only five minutes ago instead of nearly a day.

Or maybe it has been an entire day. Maybe more. He hasn't been keeping track, really.

He pulls out his cell phone to check the time, only to stop because -- no messages. Not a single text or missed call. He needs to plug it in. What if Cas gets hold of a phone or something--

He retreats to plug his phone in and by the time he's back, Crowley is setting the basin and the blade and all aside again.

"So what else do you know about demon blood?"

Crowley looks him over doubtfully, head-to-toe. "Sure you don't wanna maybe sleep first? Sober up?"

"I am sober. Demon blood."

Crowley takes a deep breath and his seat again. "It wasn't just dripping blood in an infant's mouth, you know. There had to be words. A connection had to be established somehow. It wasn't just magic, it was blood binding. It goes deep, like a deal. It links to life somehow."

"A deal. The Yellow-Eyed Demon, he made a deal with mom, sealed with a kiss." He'd seen it, when Cas had first sent him back in time.

"Right. So. We have to start with the unraveling of a deal. We'd have to cancel old contracts."

Dean eyes him dubiously. "What, we dig into the filing cabinets in hell and rip up the paperwork or something?"

Crowley crosses his legs, steeples his fingers. "Azazel's dead and his contracts were held by Lilith, like all the rest used to be. And she's dead."

"Then you," Dean points.

"Therein lies the rub. I can't feel them anymore."

"Feel them?"

Crowley closes his eyes as if he's meditating, holds very still. "There's a lot I can't feel anymore," he says at last, quietly. "With a snap I could break a binding contract, release anyone. I had that power."

"So," Dean is loath to ask. "Who has all that power, now? Does it just... move? To the next guy in command?"

Crowley's eyes finally open after another silent moment.

"Bad news," he says. "I don't know."

«»

Kevin doesn't even make it into Utah before he screws the pooch completely. They're at a rest stop and he's not starving yet but he's casting a covetous eye on the nearby McDonald's. There's _real food_ in there. And outside.  
Just outside.  
Well.

Outside sits a guy looking totally bummed out. He doesn't look homeless but he has got friggin' leaves in his hair.

Kevin likes to think he has more of a sense of self preservation than to just approach a being who was, only last night, an all-powerful angel of creation or whatever. But it's a long break outside of the bus and he has no money and no one is around to share cigarettes and.

Shit.

The kid's got leaves in his hair.

He isn't a kid. He is definitely not a fucking kid. He doesn't even slump there against the sidewalk and brick like a kid. But he looks a lot like he's a year, maybe two younger than Kevin himself.

Or at least the person he's wearing is.

He was gonna stick with the pacing but his wandering feet are bringing him closer and closer to the kid. His hood is still pulled up. He's not quite sure what will happen if the kid gets a glimpse of him.

Alright. Well. He might not even be ex-angel.

Except that he totally is.

Suddenly, Kevin can't _not_ approach.

He pauses in his pacing. Then just makes a bee-line straight for where the kid sits, and drops down next to him.

He doesn't look over, he just swings his backpack around and into his lap and pulls out the last of the Doritos. He unrolls the bag and eats some of the last shards and the hood falls down from his head as he's chewing.

The kid sits forward and puts a hand to Kevin's elbow. And stares.

"Prophet," he says after a while, voice half wrecked and half awe.

Kevin's chewing slows. He offers the bag and the kid's head tilts slowly to the side. Kevin rattles the bag. "Are you hungry?"

His hand falls from Kevin's arm and he sits up straighter, stares at nothing, trying to consider.

"I don't know," he says at last.

Kevin points at his own stomach. "Does it feel tight? Does it hurt around here?"

The kid's long-fingered hands fall to span his own belly. He looks up. "Yes."

Kevin sets the Doritos bag on the kid's legs and slides back to sit against the wall with him.

He watches the whole show: The guy carefully picks up the bag, crinkles it curiously, opens it delicately with two fingers, looks inside. He inspects a jagged half-broken chip for a while before looking to Kevin for confirmation. Kevin nods.

Chewing is an enlightening experience and swallowing looks uncomfortable. But then the revelation of food meeting his belly hits and, yeah, he gets it after that.

"Please don't make those noises," Kevin has to say, scooting a little bit away. "They're just chips, man."

The "mmm"ing doesn't quite stop. "They're so good," he says with wonder.

"Cool Ranch," Kevin says and nods.

"Cool Ranch," the kid repeats back, reverently. "I thank you, Prophet."

"Don't-- no no no. Um. Kevin. You gotta call me Kevin, man."

His eyes narrow. "Then you should call me Nemamiah, not 'man.'" He spits 'man' like it's a curse.

Kevin decides not to pick at it.

When the chips are gone, Nemamiah inspects the inside of the bag closely, and grows forlorn.

He gives Kevin a curious look and then offers the bag back.

Kevin points towards the doors of the restaurant. "Trash goes in a trash can."

Nemamiah flattens the bag out to inspect the image on the front instead.

"So, um. Are you gonna be alright out here? Is there someplace you can go?"

"Go?" he asks, like he expects 'Go' is a planet or something he's never heard of.

"You're gonna need more food. Shelter. The basics. Do you know how this works?"

Kevin could see the answer to that on his face even before he sat down. This one has no idea where to even begin with life.

"Will you give me food?" he asks.

"That's all I had. I don't even have money for more food for myself."

"Money," Nemamiah echoes. "Wait. I know how that works."

"Yeah. Do you have any?"

Nemamiah simply opens his palms to the world.

"Check your pockets," Kevin points to his jeans.

His hands come up with things that fascinate him. In one pocket, a cell phone with a cracked screen and a slip of paper from a fortune cookie. In the other pocket, thirteen cents.

"That doesn't help much. All I have is pennies, too." All together they still don't even have enough to go get a plain hamburger. "What about your back pockets?"

Nemamiah is surprised to find he has any. He stands and digs in them. Kevin takes the Doritos bag to the trash and by then, they've got new things to sort through. Papers, mostly. There's several little receipts folded and creased. One a receipt from a gas station for pump #3. And inside the receipts, at last, two cards. A driver's license and a debit card.

"Hey, there you go. You're set. And you're-- Jared, by the way," he reads the name off the cards. Jared is even skinnier and younger and gawkier on his license. Kevin's only got a year and a month on him.

"No," he says, "Nemamiah. I am Nemamiah, Angel of the Lord."

"You _were_. I'm sorry, man, but you're Jared now. You have a car somewhere and I'm guessing you had a home, too. In New Jersey. Wow."

"New Jersey?"

"Yeah, I guess you guys got dropped all over the place." To Nemamiah's blank look, Kevin says, "You're in Colorado right now."

Nemamiah squints. "That is far?"

"That's far. But the good news is that you've got a debit card. Which means you have money. And that means you can feed yourself. For a while at least," Kevin hands the cards back over.

"How?" Nemamiah looks at the cards, baffled.

Kevin shrugs. Might as well take advantage of it.

He leads the ex-angel inside the McDonalds and shows him how to buy them both lunch.

«»

Castiel is still on his feet well into the night. It's gotten colder but the layers have helped. He's on the opposite side of the city from the restaurant he'd burned at dinner and he's still got rolls and sugar packets and a potato in a napkin in his pockets.

He'd come across the aftermath of mayhem that one of the other fallen had left in their wake. Police vehicles still crowded this side of town. They're in such force that he thinks he should probably only hit one more restaurant and head directly out of town afterwards.

But right now, he knows what he needs most is sleep. He's just unsure of where it's best to get it.

He knows it's not quite cold enough to freeze someone to death, but he still doesn't wish to sleep outside. So he's got two choices.

There are residences nearby. He could try for an unlocked door and sleep in someone's car until the sun came up. The danger there would mostly be if someone spotted him in the car or if someone got up and left for work early to discover him in their car.

That would be shocking to them and it would mark him as a homeless stranger, like the other fallen who are appearing and causing little pockets of chaos.

Several blocks back, however, there is a motel. He hasn't put it into practice himself, but he's watched Dean pick locks and he thinks that he could pick a lock on an empty motel room and sleep there. The danger inherent to that plan, of course, would be if someone rented the room in the middle of the night or if room service came by. However, if there were an alarm clock in the room, he could set it for a few hours and leave again before anyone noticed him.

There seems to be less risk with the motel scheme, so that's where he heads.

There's a lonesome back corner of the lot that's well-lit, but is still far enough away from the main office to give Cas comfort. When he gets to the furthest room that sounds unoccupied and has no car out front, he realizes he's got no kind of tools on him that could help him pick a lock. He looks around the parking lot, kicks around the dumpster, finds not so much as a damned loose nail. He considers pulling one of the zippers off his new pockets but doesn't actually think the little thing is long enough to help.

So, okay. He pulls out one of his blades.

If he can make a minimum amount of damage, if the door at least looks unscarred from a distance, perhaps he could get a few hours of peace. If he makes a racket busting in and destroys the door, he can make a run for it.

He tenses, readies himself, and wedges the end of the blade between the door and the jamb.

Then he thinks, _first I should probably check the handle._

Yes. Right.  
He sighs at himself.

He turns the handle. It's locked. No other noise comes. He tries the doorknob with a little more force, jiggles it with enough noise to wake someone if they're inside.

Waits.  
Nothing.

So he breaks in.

The angel blade makes short work of the lock. It actually looks pretty clean, but the wood is a little splintered. He looks inside quickly to confirm that no one is there, then tries to push the wood back into place so it doesn't look so broken from afar.

When it's good enough, he shuts himself up inside.

He leaves the lamps off. He finds the bathroom and flips on the switch in there, then mostly closes the door. He comes back to pull the curtains with only that sliver of light to guide him.

There are two beds.  
How many motel rooms exactly like this has he been in?

There is also a phone. Tempting, but he doesn't know if one must pay to use it, so he leaves it be. He may try it before he leaves, but to alert anyone that the room is being used now would negate all this effort.

He can, however, shut himself up in the bathroom and get clean. Water. He can drink water.

There's no kitchenette in this room. No fridge. But there is a coffee pot and a packet of instant coffee. And an alarm clock.

Sleep or shower?

He must not look helpless, homeless. He must look like an average human, put-together and in control. He bathes first, quickly, tries not to make any undue noise. Setting the alarm is tricky. It explodes with noise when he presses the wrong button and he almost decides to make a run for it.

But he's already sitting on the bed. It's so soft. He wants so much to sleep.

He makes the alarm do what he wishes. Then Castiel is able to sleep for five solid, blissful hours. No dreams, only dark. A blessing.

«»

Kevin left Nemamiah to get back on the bus after they'd figured out the pin to unlock his phone. There was a number for 'home' and Kevin advised him to call and ask Jared's parents for help to get back there. To simply act as if he'd been kidnapped or brainwashed or something. At least that way he had somewhere to go back to. The promise of shelter. The pin wasn't the same for the debit card so he taught 'Nemah' how to swipe it as credit and just fake a signature based on the one on his driver's license. Depending on what Jared's parents said, if he needed anything before they rescued him, he'd at least be able to scrape by.

His parting, "Can I not come with you?" had been fully heartbreaking. Just from the look of this kid, back at home in New Jersey he was certainly some punk who skipped class and just barely cared. A 'C' student like all those who ever scoffed at Kevin in the halls. But Nemah wore him like a ten-year-old lost in the world.

"You can't," he'd said. "No," then added, "I'm sorry." He really was.

Resigned, Nemah had nodded. "I have all I need, then. I thank you, Proph-- Kevin. Thank you."

Kevin saluted with the bag of McNuggets and fries they'd had left over. "This is thanks enough. Hey, call your parents. Get home. They'll be worried about you. Trust me, it'll be okay."

It probably wouldn't. If they loved their son even a little bit, they'd know something had gone incredibly wrong.

At the next stop, in Utah, he actually _doesn't_ get back on the bus.

He was resistant, before. If he'd known he would end up trailing angels, anyway, maybe he would have stayed with Nemah, kept him safe with him. But Nemah had parents he could go back to. The next angel is a grown woman. She's in a super sleek business suit and it's got no pockets. None at all. Baffling.

Also baffling: Yasgedibarodiel is her name. Kevin shortens it to Yasgood because otherwise he's not going to be able to remember it. He doesn't want to insult her but it comes out when he's trying to convince her to go find other help and she seems completely enchanted with the way The Prophet has given her a name an abbreviation. She's pleased that he thinks she's so 'good.'

"Oh my god," he rolls his eyes.

"Our God," she corrects, but still smiles at him.

To look at her, it's like, holy shit. She's like an insanely tall Martha Jones with her hair all up and perfect in a bun and a little wobbly on her heels -- but you're not looking at her heels. You're wondering what the miles and miles of her legs look like under that suit.

No pockets had meant no ID, no cell phone, no money.

Kevin thinks that means no hope whatsoever.

"Maybe. Uh. Maybe we take you to the police and say you have amnesia or something. And they fingerprint you and CSI you and whatever and they find out who you are, where you belong."

"I am Yasgedibarodiel. And you are a Prophet of the Lord. So obviously I belong at your side." She nods to herself, confident.

"No. No, you don't get it. You've gotta. You have to find a place to live. And a way to feed yourself and get shelter. I don't have any of that. I'm leaving."

"I'll follow," she smiles, a million bright teeth.

Her optimism is so... he has to laugh.

"You can't."

"I am capable. I have been on earth before. I was not stationed here long, but I do know a few... ways. I know things! I'll follow you and I will protect you."

"With what? Your stilettos?"

"I--" she droops for the first time. "I have a blade."

"Where? Back up in heaven? Not gonna help you here," Kevin turns to leave as if he thinks he'll still make the bus.

He won't.

Her grip on his shoulder is firm. "You must let me stay with you! Prophet, I--"

" _Kevin_ ," he corrects.

"Kevin. I don't know what else there is for me. I can follow you, though. I can be of assistance."

"I don't see how. Unless you can zap me to San Diego."

"There are others! I've met--"

It's the sudden way she cuts herself off that turns him around again, stops him from pacing away from her.

"There are others. One of my brothers. I. There was no. He had no understanding of."

Kevin watches the sadness take her over. She'd been so confident when she approached him. She _knew_ him and was going to be with him and would attend him and be of great benefit to the Prophet, she knew.

Now she knows nothing. She has no more clue of what this life will bring her than the no-doubt crazed brother she had to defend herself against.

Kevin takes a deep breath. "It's not your fault."

She swallows, blinks back the sadness. The confidence returns by inches. "That's where my blade is. I will retrieve it."

He sighs. That's when he knows he's missing California for sure. "Show me where."

A few blocks back and on the edge of a park, there is a small wood and the body has been there for a while. Their appearance chases off some birds.

Kevin steels himself and approaches.

There's a dead man, heavyset, in a striped shirt. His own blade lay beside him in the grass and hers is still planted in his side. It smells awful.

Fuck.

Kevin backs away, scrambles back to the hill above. Yasgood stares down at the body.

"I am so ashamed," she whispers. "That was not me. That was not something I would do. He was-- he came at me. He was so confused. He'd never been here before and." She has nothing else to say. Her brother is dead. She had to put him down. She's been through a trauma. And she thinks Kevin is some kind of God-sent prophet.

He wasn't put here to help the angels. He can read some wonky old tablets and that's it, that's all he knows. All the rest he knows is his human life and how far away he wants to be from everything strange and supernatural that the Winchesters and the tablets had brought into his life.

There's no reason why Yasgood and any of her other brothers and sisters can't have that, too. They can run away. They can melt into society and survive. And maybe one day the Winchesters will send them back home. Or whatever.

But in the mean time, he can take her hand and draw her down to sit on the grass. He pulls off his backpack and hands it to her, folds her arms around it. "Hold this for me," he says. And it's the right thing, the exact right thing. It's what she needed: A job, an order.

She nods at him and holds the backpack close.

Kevin rolls up his sleeves and descends back to the body. He gets both blades, wipes the bloodied one off on the man's jacket.

That's all he can do, though. That's as close as he can get to it. He hauls ass back up to Yasgood's side. He gives her the clean blade and reclaims his backpack, hiding the bloodied one.

"Keep it up your sleeve or something, as we go, okay? You can't just walk around holding a knife, people freak out."

"What will happen to him?" her eyes are still on the body below.

"Someone will find him. They'll take him to a hospital-a-a morgue, and clean him up and bury him. Find his family, if he has any."

"I am his family," she says through tears.

"No," he doesn't exactly know how to comfort her, doesn't know if he should touch her. "He's in someone who did have a family."

In fact. Well.

Kevin gives her the bag back and steels himself to go towards the body again.

He gets no luck in the jacket pockets or front pockets. He has to roll the body over to get into the back pockets, but finally, there's a wallet.

He doesn't look at the name on the ID, just plucks it out, his fingers covered by his sleeve, hoping not to leave prints. He can't miss that it's a Louisiana license as he leaves it there, sticks it in the jacket.

Kevin takes the rest of what's in the wallet.

At the top of the hill, he hauls Yasgood up by her hand and decides not to let go. She looks so sad. So lost. She was so confident before, when they met, when she spotted him. Now she's shrunk. She had seemed so tall when they first met -- she still is, but she's seemed to fold in on herself.

Yasgood deserves to be a person. She deserves a chance. She deserves his help, his _company_ even, if that's all she wants.

They walk back, away from the park. Someone will find the body soon. It's a really nice place. No doubt people jog here in the mornings. He won't lay there cooling for long.

They'd passed a Starbucks and Kevin directs them back towards it. In the dead man's wallet is forty-two dollars cash. There are credit cards and a Wal-Mart gift card.

Yasgood struggles to keep her brother's blade in her sleeve, so Kevin puts it in the bag with the other. They'll find a store and buy her a coat or something. But first, some food, some coffee, a little time to breathe.

The bus would be aiming for Arizona by now, to dip in and right back out into Nevada, on the way to California.

It's strange how there's no regret in him. Not that he's not headed to San Diego right now, not that Yasgood survived her brother's attack, not that he's stuck here with $42 and someone who doesn't quite know how to be human. He feels no confusion. He actually feels like he has more purpose with Yasgood's palm against his than with the tablets in hand. She's real, alive and breathing. She's depending on him in a way the Winchesters never quite were. They needed him to do the work, to simply process information. It's not that they hadn't cared if he lived or died, and it's not as if Yasgood would certainly die without him. But he can make more good out of her than he ever did reading tablets and getting tugged between demons. He knows how to live every day. He can show her that much.

Yasgood huddles into his side in the line at Starbucks. They didn't arrive at a great time; it's crowded, the day is beginning, there are a lot of people around.

When Kevin squeezes her hand, he's a Prophet of the Lord and he's going to save this angel.

«»

Castiel contemplates a parking lot.

Shoppers move in and out and around. People are careful with their cars. People lock themselves away and lock up after themselves when not inside. They are vigilant. On occasion there will pass a person with a donut half hanging out of their mouth, a coffee in one hand, thumb texting with the other. He hopes one of them will forget their keys. He needs keys so he can slip into a car and take it and drive away.

He sits on the bus bench and eats one of his dinner rolls and sips his inexpertly-made motel coffee. He waits for someone to sucker.

It turns out, he's not the only one.

To the parking lot comes a tan pickup truck. And from this beat-up monstrosity emerges a thin, bald man in an impeccable suit.

Cas's eyes narrow in recognition.  
He's seen this show before.

Across from the supermarket is strip of small businesses. It's where he'd passed a mass of police vehicles yesterday. Where one of his brothers had gone howling off in the back of an official's car, cuffed and caged.

The man in the suit goes from door to door, flashing a badge, asking questions quickly. Cas can tell from his stance that he's carrying a gun, a knife, a flask.

When the man comes back across the street for his car, Castiel can also see a tattoo of a prayer in common script peaking from underneath his sleeve when he digs for his keys.

He's staring and the man feels the weight of it, as so many often do. It gives him pause. He turns around to observe Cas on the bench and Cas just stares right back, sips his coffee.

The keys go back in his pocket.

"Hello there. You live around here?"

"No."

The man shrugs. "Well, were you here yesterday by any chance?"

"Yes."

He approaches, pulling out his ID. "I'm Detective Ed Tully with the SPS--"

"You're really not," Cas says, chewing the last bit of his dinner roll.

He pauses. "Pardon?"

"I can see the cross," Cas motions, pointing at his pants pocket, "on your flask of holy water." Cas sips his coffee.

'Ed' leaves the identification in his pocket. He assesses Cas for a long moment, grows tense, his hand slowly moving back toward his gun. "Exorcizamus te," he starts, "omnis immundus spiritus, omnis sat--"

Cas frowns. "Don't bother. I'm not a demon." He pitches his napkin and cup in the nearby trashcan and moves forward with his hand outstretched. "Cas. What's your name?"

The hunter looks at his hand, back up to him, back at his hand. "Ed Tull--"

"That's alright. I can call you Ed if you like. How many have you found so far, Ed?"

"Found? Of _what_?" He still hasn't pulled his hand away from where it hovers, under the back of his jacket, over the butt of his gun.

Castiel lets his hand drop. "The... crazed people. The ones who appeared out of nowhere."

The hunter lets his hands drop. Looks around. Comes closer. "Are they possessed?"

"No. It's complicated. May we?" he points at the cab of the truck.

The hunter looks him head to toe.

"All I have on me are blades. We should talk," he looks over the man's shoulder to the parking lot with its shifting landscape of cars and civilians. "In private."

"I work alone."

"You can go back to working alone after we've discussed this."

Finally, he turns toward his truck and gets in. Cas walks around to the other side.

"It's Cane, actually. Cane Bergell. You?"

"It actually _is_ Cas, thank you. What do you know so far?"

Cane sighs and rubs his bare head, leans against his door. "People. A load of people just appeared everywhere after some kind of meteor shower or something. I mean, _not_ a meteor shower, clearly. The one I put down last night, he called himself Raziel. Looked it up. All the lore points to angel but all I did was plug him. Two in the chest and he went right down." Cane points left, out his window. "That one, the police have only got one name, too. Sarayel. Another 'el.' I'd hate to think we're repeating this whole apocalyptic angel-demon dance-off again."

Castiel sighs. "Sarayel."

"So, do you know what's going on or not?"

"I do. And I need your help," he licks his lips and squints out over the road. "I need to get back into the United States. The people I hunt with, they were working on something important. Something big. I need to get back to them."

"What, you've got no car? No-- wait, wait. WHAT is going on here? If you've got the info, I want it. I need to stop this from happening. What are they? What's going on?" Cane demands.

Cas takes a deep breath. The seat squeaks underneath him as he fidgets for a moment. "They were angels. Heaven has been corrupted by one of their kind."

Cas breathes in and out evenly again.

"One of _our_ kind." His gaze slips to the side to measure Cane's reaction. The man is very still. Both his hands rest on the bottom of the steering wheel. He's looking directly at Cas.

"Your kind. You. I've." He stops, restarts. "I've seen the work of angels before. I've seen them burn people out," he says, low and dangerous. Accusatory.

"That won't be happening again anytime soon. Every angel has been sent away from heaven. Every angel is now a mortal. It was a-- _creature_ called the Metatron."

"So he did us hunters a favor, made every one of you extra killable." Cane's hands have fallen to his lap. The blade inside his suit jacket is not exactly formidable. Cas can tell. But Cane is completely right: One good stab and it's all over.

Castiel raises his hands slowly, stretches out his fingers, shows Cane he's got nothing in them and means no harm.

"There are two angelic swords in my coat. I can hand them over. You can keep them, if you wish. Get me back to the hunters I was working with and I will give you all the information I have and we can part ways without bloodshed. We don't need to harm each other. There's already enough of that going on."

"So you think you all can just drop out of the sky, burn people out, and walk around in our skins and we're supposed to make peace with that? The one they hauled in yesterday, he had ID, he had a _family_ who was looking for him in frigging Argentina. You burned these people out to save yourselves--"

Cas raises his voice. "I don't deny that there were angels who harmed humans. I don't deny that there were those who were in favor of ending this world, but others of us weren't. We were on humanity's side and we still are and now we _share_ a side, do you understand? This was a different-- a rogue. A _bad guy_. An enemy. This was another of our kind, and he wasn't just trying to end the planet, he ended our species, instead. Sent us down here and now we are as human as you."

Castiel slowly reaches for the blades inside his jacket to which Cane quickly reaches back and pulls his pistol out and puts it to Cas's head.

Cas keeps moving anyway. He pulls out both blades and hands them over, hilt-first, across the seat. "You can shoot me and take both blades. Or I can turn them and kill you and you will likely hit me anyway. Or you can extend me trust when I say that I mean you no harm. I only wish to get back to my-- I need to return to the United States. To the people I was working with."

Neither of them lower or use their weapons. "Who?" Cane challenges.

"The Campbells. Two of the Campbells."

"I've heard of them," Cane concedes, but doesn't remove his gun. "And who are you wearing?"

"I lost him a long time ago," Cas's voice goes harsh on him. "I tried to keep him alive in here but the vessel has been mine for more than a year now. I lost him," he repeats. "But there are others who don't have to lose their families. You said it yourself: There are people all over the world looking for their lost family members. We can send most of them back. It won't be the same person, I know. But it will be an angel -- maybe one who never had a reason to love humanity in the first place. Maybe we," he licks his lips, knows this is true. "Maybe we send them home, back to their families and they may not be the same person, but they'll have someone who cares for them. They'll have shelter. These people don't have to die."

"They're not people," Cane's jaw clenches and his gun barrel seems to grow warm where it's pressed against Cas's head.

He realizes he may soon have to make the decision to gut Cane instead of waiting for him to regain his cool. His hands stay steady where they hold out the blades between them.

"They are now. Without the ability to hold the human soul back inside, it's likely the... originals are already dead. Metatron did not concern himself with the fate of humanity. He wanted to write his own story. Play god," Cas mutters the last bitterly. He looks down and carefully places the two blades on the empty seat between them. They roll to the side, clatter against Cane's thigh. "No one else needs to die," he says again, and leans away from Cane's gun.

After another moment of tension, Cane clicks the safety on his gun and stows it again. "I work alone," Cane repeats. "I'll get you back to the border. I'll get you a passable ID. If you can pay for it."

"I can't. Keep the blades if you must. An angel blade will kill a demon instantly. They work against many creatures."

Cane looks down to the blades and lifts one, assessing it. "Bullshit."

"It's true."

Cane's gaze eventually turns from the weapon back to Cas. "You're not freaking out, like the others."

"I've been here several times. The ones who have been stationed on earth before may have a better idea of how to navigate human life. Some will never be found. They'll make their way. I assume all the others will be--" he shrugs. He doesn't know. Angry, confused, in awe, overwhelmed, hurt. Some so loved their Father he can imagine them wasting away from grief at the distance they now feel between themselves and heaven. Simply curling up wherever they landed to mourn and die.

For his part, Cas thinks nothing of the distance to heaven. The distance to Kansas seems more insurmountable.

Cane's cell phone rings.

He digs it out and the conversation is short. When he hangs up, he casts a doubtful eye on Castiel. "Got another one. Think you can talk one of your _brothers_ down?"

That will depend upon if they recognize him. But he says, "I can try."

«»

"Alright, that's enough," Dean finally declares from behind him.

Crowley finishes chanting his words one more time before he dusts the ashes of sage off his fingers and turns away from Sam.

"I'll say," he responds, quieter.

Dean lowers his voice. "Out," he demands, pointing down the hall.

Crowley doesn't make a fuss, he just puts his hands in his pockets and strolls away.

"Believe I saw some scotch in the library."

"None of it's for _you_."

Crowley goes to the old sideboard. (And, " _Sideboards_? Really? Vintage.") He uncorks the bottle, swirls and smells it before Dean has caught up and takes it out of his hands.

"Where are the glasses?"

" _Not for you_ ," Dean repeats.

Crowley heaves a deep sigh. "Well, you've got to give me something, I'm starving."

"You can starve."

"Yes. Of course. That'll save your brother."

"Fuck you, you don't even know what's wrong with him."

"Not explicitly," Crowley points at Dean's big, know-it-all nose, "but I've still got a better idea than you have." He weaves around Dean then and heads to the kitchen.

He gets all the way into the third cabinet before Dean catches up to him again.

"How. The fuck. Did you do that."

"Just blessed I guess," he mutters before closing the cabinet and turning. Dean looks truly baffled. "Do what?"

"You didn't even feel it?" Dean points behind himself, back toward the other room. "The Devil's trap, under the carpet I put there. You walked right in and out."

Hmm.

Crowley thinks about it for a moment. No. He hadn't felt anything. So what if...

He blinks and he's outside. He blinks and he's in Istanbul. He filches a few things from a spice stand and blinks again.

There's Dean, turning in every direction, rapidly, hollering his name.

"Keep it down," Crowley rolls his eyes and tosses the herb sachets on the nearest counter. "Well this obviously isn't doing any good," he wedges some fingers in between the collar and his throat. "You mind?"

"Yes," Dean snarls. But after a withering look he seems to reconsider.

The anti-demon traps aren't working on him anymore. Dean would never suspect that Crowley's more worried about that than he is.

After a minute of hemming and hawing, Dean finally pulls the keys out and comes up to relieve Crowley of the last of his chains and manacles.

Crowley stands very still and after a good minute simply raises an eyebrow as if to say, _see? Not popping off._

Dean frowns and shakes his head. "I must be losing my mind."

"I imagine you are. You've lost track of your angel, haven't you?"

Dean bristles visibly and seals his mouth shut tight.

Ah. Worse than that, then.

Crowley's first instinct is to toss out a carefree 'Condolences' but instead.

Well. Instead, he drops it.

"Have you got a kettle?"

Dean eyes a cabinet behind Crowley before he asks, "Why?"

He just turns and digs through until he finds it. It's a gray, utilitarian old thing with a whistle.

"And I imagine you haven't got any tea."

"Uh, actually, Sam's got this girly thing where he likes floral teas and shit--"

Crowley just gives him a look.

Dean raises and drops his hands, shakes his head and goes to open the spice cabinet where all the tea boxes take up the top shelf (since Sam's the only one who can goddamn _reach_ it). He stands on his toes and stretches really high and a box or two fall on his head and he yanks down the bag full of miscellaneous teas stolen from hotel courtesy bars.

He watches Crowley get water and dig through the bag.

"This is crazy. You were killing everybody we knew two days ago."

"And before that I was your boss and before that I was your ally and you let me lay hands on your surrogate father's soul and," Crowley shrugs, "make out with him."

"You didn't _make out_ with him."

Crowley pats his pockets. "Where is my phone, anyway?"

"No."

"At any rate, I've clearly got a very limited amount of mojo left--"

"You just zapped out and came back again!"

"But I've been trying to throw you against the wall for the past ten minutes so, yeah, _limited_."

That shuts Dean up.

"You can--" Crowley stops. Shakes his head. He moves around where Dean is leaning, immovable, in the middle of everything to start the stove. "Can't even boil the fucking water myself," he complains. He sets the kettle up and turns on the burner. "Look," he restarts. "I know, alright? Mortal enemies and all but step back and take a look at the entire picture."

He leans back against the counter and they consider each other. "I mean, how does it stand right now, eh? I know what that was," he points above, at the outside world they navigated through to get here, to this bunker. "Those were angels, in vessels, sans wings. The whole thing just came crashing down, didn't it? So you've got the whole heavenly army out of play entirely, bloody _knights_ on the loose -- and I guarantee if Abaddon is up and about, she's waking all the others up right now --"

" _Others?_ "

"Knights, Lords, Ladies, Captains," he gestures at himself, "Kings. You've already met Horsemen. There are fucking _Jesters_ , too, welcome to it."

Dean seems to sink into himself more, crosses his arms over his chest and just descends into this pale-faced exhaustion that's been hovering around him. "You're kidding me."

Crowley frowns. "Point is, you're the only ones who have the stones to kill them instead of sending them back. And Sam is the only one who can finish what he started on me." Crowley shrugs. "So I can. I don't know. So it can be finished."

"Finishing you would kill him," Dean says, quiet. "That's why I had to stop him. We couldn't do it. I couldn't do it, not at that price."

"Fine, well, when he's back to eighty percent--"

Dean glares.

"Ninety. One hundred. Then maybe he'll be fit enough to finish it for me. But until then--"

"What. You're our 'ally' again," Dean says with a sneer.

"No." He considers it, honestly. "Resident sorcerer maybe. I don't know, Winchester. Let me fix him," he finishes without a hint of bullshit to be found.

"You were killing people just _hours ago_ ," Dean stresses again.

"And now I'm making tea in the creepy underground lair of the people who hate me the most in the entire world," he points out. "You can kill me, probably, pretty easy now. Or you can throw me to the dogs and they kill me. But first, my former underlings torture your location out of me and bring Abaddon to your doorstep."

"I don't see a downside to just shivving your ass in there anywhere."

Crowley shrugs. "Your brother probably dies. Those blood spells rise back up and eat him from the inside out all over again." He comes forward as the kettle begins to whistle. Dean steps aside to avoid him.

They're quiet while Crowley makes his cup of tea. Sam really is into the floral shit. When he dares to pop out next, Crowley's definitely getting something on the blacker side. And as many bottles of booze as he can carry. Who knows how drunk he can get now that he's a little less _almighty_. It may be fantastic.

He supposes Dean is glaring a hole in his back trying to come up with some credible threat that completely misses the point that Crowley still stands _in his kitchen_ , steadily _taking his bullshit_ with a minimum of complaint.

He's right, of course.

"If Sam's not getting better by tomorrow, I'm gonna find out just how easy it is to kill you."

"Tomorrow," Crowley grumbles. "Are we talking about the same Sam here? Because the one I last saw taking a coma in your brother's bedroom was at a full _two_ percent. If you're talking one-hundred, you're in for a wait."

«»

There is clearly a pattern here, Kevin thinks. Each time they encounter a new angel, whatever they're doing, screaming, moping, crying, mourning, they stop and acknowledge him. Every one of them recognizes him, no matter if they've been on earth before or not.

Yasgood's excitement is always clear. She draws her brother or sister in by the hand and introduces them. "He is the Prophet but you should call him 'Kevin.'" She instructs carefully. They've already encountered eleven other angels in various states of distress and a calm comes down upon them when they've got their sister's hand and they know the Prophet is here to help them.

Eight of them had wallets, identification, money, and cell phones. They spent all day teaching them how cell phones worked and what it meant that they had homes to go back to. Some would surely get caught up at the border, but with so many new people around, the government already had to know that something was up. He sent them away with confidence, anyway. At least they had a shot at finding a home, shelter. People were already waiting for them in their homes, waiting to _love_ them.

It was pretty tough. He taught them to speak in lies on the phone, as if they'd been taken, black-bagged and dumped in a state or country where they weren't supposed to be. A woman who called herself Chadakiel had hung up with her vessel's family in Indiana, glassy-eyed in wonder. "They love me. They say they miss me and will come to bring me home." She was so happy. She hadn't expected ever to be happy again. It was a wonder. Kevin and Yasgood held her tight, hugged her before they bundled her off into a cab to the airport.

Chadakiel and another, Saspam, had homes to go to, family who were already searching for them. They had fragile little stories about getting kidnapped and lost and so, aside from taxi fair and enough money for food, they left the rest of their cash with Kevin. It would go to helping maintain his expanding band of merry men.

One of the eight with ID had refused to go home. He didn't want to go to strangers, did not want to lie, was not content to continue on with some stranger's life. Mebahel gave Kevin everything in his pockets and refused to be called by his vessel's name, or to even hear it. He wanted to restart and he knew Kevin, _simply knew_ he was there to help him.

The three other angels had no identification. One was in a nightgown, her vessel taken from the earth and filled with an angel in her sleep. She was called Lekabel, and accepted Lek as a nick-name with good grace. She seemed mostly to be fascinated with everything, drifting around, touching things.

Araziel was relieved to find Yasgood and held tight to her for a long time. He looked like he'd come straight off some South-Asian farm and had nothing in his pockets. But some intuition led him to several of the other angels. It had been a couple days since their fall at that point, but he could unerringly lead them to another of his brothers or sisters. He led them around by the hand like Yasgood and sought to comfort them. Araziel didn't understand why some of them had to leave. He wanted them all to stick together.

Saharnatz had understood and explained it. She'd been stationed on earth a few times before and knew what a cold, cruel place it could be. Everyone who had a home, she said, should return to it for their own protection. "Human families are built for that." The implication was clear: Their own family had fallen apart and couldn't be trusted for the same. She had a more practical sense than the other angels and thought, when it started to get dark again, that it would be best if they all found someplace to rest.

To this point, Mebahel had to learn to sign his vessel's signature. He practiced it on napkins during dinner. He had credit cards they could use, and they did. First, at a restaurant where all six of them crowded into a large booth, then at the front desk of a motel where they got two rooms right next to each other.

Araziel worried about the separation until Kevin opened the adjoining door for them. There were four beds and two couches, enough space for everyone. Kevin put his bag on the table, now clinking with every jostle as it was packed full of freaking angel blades.

Saharnatz -- "Sahara," was the nick-name she had accepted over the more conventional "Sarah" -- was the only one among them who didn't lose her shit over the sleeping arrangements. Araziel -- Araz -- wanted to be near Yasgood forever and ever, amen. But that didn't mean he wanted to stray far from the others, no matter their level of interest in him.

And _none of them_ wanted to be in the room without the Prophet.

In the end, Sahara got the adjoining room to herself, Mebahel liked the couch, Yasgood and Araz crowded Kevin on one bed, and Lek just didn't want to sleep. She wanted to know how to work the television and the sink and the toilet and the hair dryer and feel the towels and run her fingers over the textures on the bottoms of everyone's shoes. Though at some point in the early morning she curled up like a cat on the far end of the bed Sahara slept on.

Kevin is the first up. Everyone else was not as comfortable with the actual settling down and sleeping part of sleep, but had eventually dozed off. With some gentle scooting and untangling, he crawls out of Yasgood's arms. He covers her and Araz with the sheet carefully and takes in the whole scene.

He doesn't know why it occurred to him, but he also needs to step up and hold a hand over each of their mouths so he can see they're all still breathing. He wants to take a shower, too, but decides to wait until one of them wakes up so they don't all think he's disappeared or something.

He does not know where all this mothering came from but it whispers right past his conscious thought and just takes up space in his bones. He can't care about why he suddenly cares. It's just _right there_.

There are a few bottles of soda and some snacks wedged into his bag with the weapons. He pulls out his cell phone and tries to decide whether to toss it or something, then just puts it back in. Instead, he takes stock of what else they've got as he cracks open a warm Coke to drink.

There are the contents of Mebahel's wallet and Chadakiel's and another of the angel's they'd already packed off. All told, over three hundred dollars in cash, some gift cards -- Wal-Mart, Wendy's, Starbucks, and a Visa gift card with eight bucks left on it. Mebahel's vessel left them four credit cards. He decides not to use the credit cards of the angels they had sent home lest they get stuck with the bill. It was enough that they had left their cash to help their brothers and sisters. He packs those away at the bottom of the bag.

They'd purchased a jacket for Yasgood already yesterday so she could carry her blade but Lek can't walk around in a nightgown forever.

Kevin plans a trip for them, probably to the nearest Wal-Mart. The gift cards will help with the expense. Some of the cash they've been left with is foreign. They'd hit up a few banks and see if they could get it exchanged. One of the angels they sent back home had quite a few Russian rubles to spare.

But what if they picked up more angels along the way? And what would he do with all of them?

For sure, he's not going to head back to the Winchesters. They are the center of a world of supernatural chaos. He might eventually seek their help if Cas has stayed with them. He might be able to help his siblings. But in the mean time, what is he gonna do with all these guys?

Before he can finish half his soda, Sahara appears from the doorway to the next room, blinking at him.

Kevin smiles, an expression she doesn't return. It won't darken his mood, though. Sahara's just not a smiley girl. He gets up and hands her the rest of his drink. "Here: Caffeine. Hey, I'm gonna take a shower. Make sure nobody freaks out, okay?"

Sahara nods and Kevin shuts himself up in the bathroom in the next room, deciding that Lek is so deep asleep, the noise probably won't wake her.

When he gets out in fresh jeans and his shirt from yesterday, Yasgood and Sahara are at the door to the other room's bathroom, coaching Araz through using the toilet. Yasgood was wildly uncomfortable with having to use the restroom at Starbucks yesterday morning but Sahara's seen a lot and has been able to coach her siblings through these moments with more confidence.

After an hour of fighting over who needs a shower and who just wants food, they head out.

It's fast food for breakfast (which if fascinating for everyone, and probably all the tables around them) and then a walk to the nearest shopping center.

When they finally make it to the Wal-Mart, everybody wants to head in a different direction.

"Hold on, hold on, guys, seriously. Okay. Lek, you need clothes. Sahara, can you put her in something a little more, like, appropriate?" She nods. "Okay. Yasgood, you need shoes. Flat ones. We're walking too much, you're gonna roll an ankle in your heels. Araz, you need some real shoes, too. Guys, don't take the tags off or anything, we have to _buy stuff_ and then you can put it on, okay? Meb, come with us and then we can go look at all the food."

Mebahel had been eyeing the bulk jars of animal crackers stacked at the front with fascination but watching Sahara and Lek wander into the women's clothes, he looks even more interested. He disdainfully plucks at the jacket and utilitarian clothes of his vessel. It looks like maybe he was a construction worker or something in his previous life. His jeans and shirt are plain and well-worn, some paint stains deep in the fabric. His hair is shorn short and there are small plugs in his ears He's about as tall as, though a little less built than Sam Winchester. "Can I not wear dresses?" he asks, drifting closer to the clothes.

"You can if you want," Kevin says. "You can wear whatever you want to."

"Mebahel, your vessel is male," Yasgood says with concern.

"I didn't ask for that. I don't even know what that means! Why can I not be female? I am a being of entirely different species. I should be able to choose what I wish--"

"And you _can_ ," Kevin steps between Mebahel and Yasgood. "So Meb, you can go with Lek to get clothes and we'll be over in the shoes. Okay?"

Kevin can see Lek drift off and Sahara catches up real quick, grabs her hand so she doesn't float off further. They melt into the racks.

"Is 'Meb' a male name?" he-- they?-- _Meb_ hangs back to ask.

"I don't know. Mable is a girl's name. We can call you that or whatever you want," Kevin pats Mebahel on the shoulder. "You can be anything. Anyone you want to."

Meb stares blankly at Kevin. He has to point at Sahara, disappearing between the clothing. "Go catch up. You can decide later."

Meb shakes it off and goes to follow their sisters.

Kevin turns to lead the others off toward the shoes. "What if I should want a dress?" Araz asks, lingering a bit behind, watching Meb go.

Kevin feels like maybe rolling his eyes but he only laughs. "You can wear whatever you want. I just want you guys to be happy."

He says this without a thought for how deeply he means it but he truly, honestly does.

«»

After their third encounter with a fallen angel, Cane buys Castiel lunch.

Mostly Cas eats and Cane just sits there staring into his beer. Finally, when Cas has already powered through half his hamburger, Cane speaks softly. "You know, I never had to face one before. Not on my own. There were others. Other hunters I was working with who. They'd seen. They saw. They."

He sips his beer.

"If I had gone up against one of them when they were all powered up. Man. I donno if I'd have made it." He looks at Cas with a little awe, a little fear.

Cas puts down the rest of his hamburger and dusts his hands off under the table. He sits and assesses Cane. He's holding things back from him for a good reason: To protect himself. He'd heard that Sam and Dean had been attacked before for their roles in the apocalypse. Knew that they were not trusted, even by the rest of the Campbell clan, when they were alive. When people live so far under the radar, news gets around on rumor. _Campbell_ is a trusted name in hunting; _Winchester_ more feared than respected. And for all anyone knew, the Campbells were alive, the Winchesters killed after a nation-wide shooting spree.

Just as he obfuscated his affiliation with the hunters, he lets this go, too.

Cane doesn't need to know that, if Cas were anyone else, the fallen angels they encountered likely wouldn't act so violently at the sight of them. That's not vital information. But Cane may catch on eventually. So he can't stay here in Canada, sweeping them up with him.

Cane has to know, somehow, that it won't always be like that. That some of the fallen will be lost and in need of help. They will be calm and compliant. Not all of them will have to be put down.

And, frankly, Cas himself needs to keep away from his fallen brothers and sisters so he doesn't have to slay any more of them.

Cane let him keep the two original blades.  
They've collected three more for his own use.

"We were on opposing sides. These others we've met, they were more in favor of ending the world and entering paradise. Not all of them will react the same way. You'll be able to help the others. Just. Probably not with my help." Cane looks up at him. Cas shrugs. "Politics," he tries to dismiss it, like it can't be helped.

"So you really think they're not all--" Cane goes wide-eyed. Cas thinks the implication is 'crazy.'

"They can't all be."

"You think you're just bad luck, huh?"

Cas nods. "Yeah."

Cane finally nods after a while. "Okay. Alright. Look. I can make you a passable ID. I just have to go buy the right paper to make it look like a legitimate passport. Then," he points south, "the border isn't far. Think you can call someone to meet you there? Drive you back down."

"I have the numbers written down. My cell phone died. Um. After I landed. They didn't answer before, but--"

Cane pulls out his phone. "Here. Try it, then we'll call my guy with the paper."

Cas eats fries while he gets the same results as before. No answer on Dean's phone, just the mailbox on Sam's. He doesn't know what to say on the voicemail while Cane is sitting right across from him so he simply hangs up and shakes his head.

"Alright. We'll set you up with something. I donno. We'll figure it out."

They have to head northwest again to meet the man with the passport paper. Cane gets a lot of calls on the way. Every hunter he knows, from the sound of it. There's panic, violent outbursts, and simple status reports. To Castiel's relief, Cane gets reports of angels who are willing to be helped and shipped back home, to the families of their vessels. Cane tries to calm other hunters, tries to convince them that not every one of the fallen is going to attack when confronted.

Cane's contact isn't comfortable with strangers, so Castiel has to hang back. Cane drops him off at a coffee shop when they get into town and drives off.

Cas still has no money, but there's a girl inside with a laptop and a bundle of cords. She also has the same phone as him.

He enters and approaches and goes up to her table... but doesn't quite know how to gain her attention or if this is considered rude or creepy. So he ends up kind of hovering there for a minute until she looks up.

"Uh. Excuse me. I was just wondering. Is that--" he points to the cords, pulls out his cell phone, "could I use that for a little while? My phone is dead."

A smile grows out from the corner of her mouth as he's talking, her breath grows short and her pupils dilate.

She finds him attractive.

He smiles back.

"Ah-of course. Sure. Did you--" she looks around. It's sparse; there aren't many people at the tables. He could easily take a spot of his own, but she doesn't see abandoned belongings anywhere. "Do you wanna sit here for a while?" She half-closes the lid of her laptop.

"If you're sure you don't mind," Cas pulls out the opposite chair and joins her. She hands over the right cord, untangles it, and giggles uncomfortably as it takes a few awkward moments. He smiles at her again, reassuringly. She blushes nicely.

Cas helps her plug the charger into the wall and fumbles a little with getting the other end into his own phone. She closes her laptop all the way and reaches over, turning the phone and touching his fingers on the plug. "Like this," she instructs.

"Yes. Thank you. I'm not used to this," he shrugs.

"It's okay. You lost your charger?"

"I left it at a friend's house."

She nods and introduces herself. Castiel finds that he immediately can't remember her name, too absorbed in the feel of her soft skin as they shake hands. She has Anna's eyes, shares the height of her vessel, but otherwise she's different and lovely. A tumble of brown hair, softly rounded face. Her voice is low and a little amused. She was here doing work of some kind. Grading something. A teacher then, he supposes. And outside there's the honk and the dragging spin of a car overcorrecting.

Cas looks over his shoulder as a jeep skids to the side, just into view, stops. The driver looks back through his window, down the street, then throws the car back into gear and books it down the road.

Several pedestrians follow. Running.

Someone else shouts from back the same direction they came.

Cas turns back to the woman he's sitting with. She's looking over, out the window and down the street as far as she can. She turns back to him. "Should. Should we go look?"

Cas turns and looks again. "I don't know."

"Weird things have been happening the past couple days, you know."

Cas takes a deep breath. "I know." He gets up and pushes open the cafe door to have a look.

Several people are in the street and on the sidewalk of the small town. All of them in various poses of stress, ready to run, ready to grab their kids, paused in the doors of cars. They're all looking down the street at something large. It only resolves itself in Castiel's vision after it bellows once and turns.

It's a massive grizzly bear.

The animal is watching everyone on the street, creeping closer to them. It sniffs at a car and gets up on its hind legs to lean up and shake it once with all the force of its huge body.

When the car rattles, several people bolt and flee down another side street and back in Cas's direction.

Cas finds himself drifting forward, curious.

The bear drops back down to the ground and slowly turns. Several people skitter out of the way, trying to watch but wanting to get out of its line of sight.

And the bear sees Castiel.

It must. If he couldn't tell from this far, he can tell by the way the bear is suddenly barreling towards him. People on the street dive out of the way, run off. Cas himself backs up, elbow slamming into the glass door that's being propped open by another cafe patron.

But Cas doesn't get far and hasn't decided to really turn and run before the shape of the bear dissolves before everyone's eyes and in the middle of the street appears a fully-grown, very naked man.

The first thing he does is scream.

_"CASTIEL!"_

No.

"Brother?" Cas says.

Still naked, now violently angry, his brother marches forward, gains speed, and slams into Cas, hurling him against the side of the building. Cas feels his head crack the glass window of the coffee shop and wheels his hands, trying to keep himself upright. His brother is in front of him again, both hands on Cas's neck, face nothing but **rage**. He lifts Cas off the ground, against the glass, choking him. People are screaming and running but the noise is whiting out around him as he chokes. He scrabbles at his brother's arms, then gives it up, reaching into his jacket for one of the blades. With a hand still scratching at the ones around his throat, he pulls out the closer of the two blades and spins it in his palm, thrusting forward. It sinks into the soft flesh of his brother's side and he howls in pain, dropping Cas, only to come forward again with fists.

Cas blocks, blocks, attempts to strike back and hits only air. He falls forward and down a little, ducking under his brother's reach and falling to the pavement. Finally he gets enough of an inhale that the world returns in all its shouting and now-distant screaming. Just in time for him to catch a sound punch to the side of the head. He sprawls to the side, on the ground again. His brother is shouting at him, raging, but the ringing in his ears isn't letting him hear but one word in six.

He knows what his brother says, regardless. Knows what he's being blamed for.

His brother's mistake is in giving him just enough unhindered seconds to get his hands under him. Once Cas has his balance back and skids to his feet, it's all over.

He pops back up, shoves the blade up into his brother's chest, right into his vessel's heart, turning, pinning him against the wall before he can release the forward momentum of the stroke, pull back, and yank the blade out of him again.

The body wilts at his feet, dumping blood on the ground. His brother's hand is thrown out on the sidewalk. One delicate web of skin and bones, five thin fingers. Flat. No longer curled in incomprehensible rage.

He does not even know who he just killed.

When he looks up, everyone has fled. There's one man, crouched behind a car door with his camera phone peeping up through the open window.

Phone. Right. Inside, he can see, no one is left. Everyone fled the coffee shop. Even the girl with the laptop.

He goes back in, doesn't see anyone hiding under a tables or anything. He thinks to just grab his cell and go, but, well. It's rude. But the girl had money enough for coffee and a laptop, she has a job she's doing, and therefore, income. She can afford another phone charger. Cas has absolutely nothing to his name except pilfered food and two blades soaked in the blood of his kin.

He takes the charger out of the wall, too. Jumbles the wire up and shoves it in his pocket.

He exits the cafe again. That same man is still cowering behind is car door with a camera trained on him.

Cas marches up, reaches over the door, yanks the cell phone out of the man's hands. No resistance, only a yelp. He scrambles into the car and pulls the door closed behind him.

As Cas walks quickly out of town, he opens the back of the man's cell phone, tosses the piece of plastic off somewhere to the side; takes out the battery, throws it in a puddle of standing water. There's little chips and things inside the cell phone. He rips them out with his fingers and scatters the little parts, then is careful to walk over them, stamping them into the ground. He puts the phone between his hands and leans into it, cracking it as well as he can. Then he throws the phone down another street, hard as he can. It clatters against a service door and breaks apart some more.

He starts running west until there's no one around that he can see, then takes another path across a great field to head north, in the direction Cane went.

Only an hour later and Cane comes upon him heading south. Cas had only had to dodge one wailing cop car. All he had to do was slink behind some trees and it passed him right by.

"The hell?" Cane asks through his open window. "You couldn't wait?"

Cas hastily gets in the passenger side and sinks low on the street, rolls up the window on his side.

"I ran into someone."

Cane slows down driving back in the direction of the small town as he listens to Castiel's story.

At first he thinks to double back and avoid it entirely, but curiosity gets the better of him and he tells Cas to keep low on the seat. Cane decides to drive straight through town to see the aftermath. He even goes so far as to park, hop out, and present his fake ID to get an explanation. Cas hears him introduce himself as Detective Sam Tarly this time.

To Cas's relief, he doesn't hang around for long. Back in the truck, he looks baffled, staring at the steering wheel rather than starting the car.

"So. So, what? You think he dropped into. Uh. You think he took over and the vessel was a. A." He pauses again. Looks down where Cas is crouched. "A skinwalker?"

Cas has been thinking about this.

"Before, when we were. Well. Holy. Weapons of God. Blessed and infallible. That couldn't have happened. Whenever we took over a human vessel, if there were something wrong with it, just the absorption-- just the _exposure_ to our true forms, inside of them, it would have burnt any infection out. Any abomination of the soul like that."

"So." Cane mulls this over. "So, what?"

Cas sighs. "Can you drive please?"

Cane obliges him, starts up the car. When they get a little further out of town, heading back south, Cas explains.

"I suppose that, if we are no longer angelic at all, we could fall into vessels that take the form of other monsters."

"There is the alternative, though. You know that, right?" Cane asks.

He does, indeed. Nods.

"Not all of us have been on earth before, but many of us have. And many of us have fought evil, been witness to different things... have seen. Have known about what other beings you hunt." He nods again, accepting, but hoping it's not possible. "He could have sought out a skinwalker. Asked for the bite."

Cane doesn't say anything to that. It's all so horrible enough.

They decide to hole up at a motel for the night before heading back down to the border. It gives Cane enough time to assemble some ID for Cas to cross with. Cane decides he'll be an Canadian, visiting family.

He lets Cas borrow a different shirt to take his passport photo in. Cane lets him use a disposable razor so he'll be less grizzled tomorrow than he is in his photo. "It'll make the photo look less fresh. And what do we call you?" he asks. "Cas Campbell?"

After a moment, Cas accepts this with a nod.

Cane gets it all typed out, laminated, constructed. Even prints some fake stamps on the inner pages so it looks like this isn't his only trip to Canada.

Cane gives him money and sends him out for some supplies and food while he's working. He's a little cross when Cas gets back because it takes him so damn long.

Cas has a good excuse, though.

This time, the sister he'd run into had been a freshly-minted vampire. Nothing close to the sheer power of creation that she'd held as an angel, but she had hoped it would be enough to destroy any human in her way.

In the mirror over the bathroom sink, Cas watches himself scrubbing vampire remains out of his jacket. He remembers having seen this before.

«»

Dean pulls out his phone again and still nothing. He's been sitting in the Impala, outside the bunker, for too long now. Watching his own eyes in the mirror, talking out loud-- praying, if he's honest. (And he's _not_.)

There's nobody to pray to. He saw them, masses of them, so incredibly many of them falling from the sky. He doesn't believe angels are still out there. Humans, now, all of them. Clawing at humanity, trying to get a grip on mortal life, wailing and gnashing their teeth.

All he knows is that creepy little douchebag is probably laughing somewhere. Unless the spell took Metatron down, too. Stuck him in that dumpy, creepy little body and made him do something for a living other than reading fucking books.

But if it's just him up there, Dean doesn't want him to hear. Doesn't want Cas's enemies to hear his desperation for him.

But he's _dying_ here, wanting to know. Wanting to find him.

Garth won't call back, Kevin packed up and left, any allies they had left were dying at Crowley's hands only a few days ago and now, the only friend they have is that rat bastard, saying his spells down in the bunker, trying to keep Sam's pieces together. Trying to hold back the eerie glow under his skin.

He looks down at his phone again and thumbs to Cas's name. There's absolutely no good reason why he hasn't been the one to reach out yet. Except that he's scared. Scared of what it means if Cas doesn't pick up on the other end. It blurs everything else, makes him stupid. Makes his stomach churn. But it's been too long. He can't _not_ anymore.

Another glance in the mirror to make sure Crowley hasn't come up to the bunker door.

Dean hits dial on Castiel's number.

It rings through to voicemail.

No. Fuck no. No.

He hangs up.

He puts his head down on the steering wheel and dials again.  
Voicemail. Dials again.  
Voicemail. Dials again.

Fuck.

Dials again. This time he speaks.

"Where are you? Jesus, Cas, call me. Where are you. Cas, you've gotta. Sammy's in bad shape. If you. If you've got anything, if you _know_ anything. Or even if you can just. Just call back to say you've got nothing. But that you're on your way. You. You've been here before. You know where to head. Kansas. You know where. You gotta come in, man. I'm dying here." He stops. Hangs up.

Dials again.

At the voicemail he says, "Sorry. That was just. I'm just. Up to my ears in it. I'm not _dying_ dying, I know you take things real literal. I. You've gotta," he sputters for a moment, then he recites his number and Sam's. "Uh. And there's a landline to the bunker," he gives that number, too. Just in case. "If you get this somehow, just anything. Just call in, say anything, I've gotta know, man. There's only you." He'd meant to say: _There's just Sam and Crowley here, and me and no one. And only you for me, you gotta come back to me._ But that sounds so fucking desperate and there's no way he could. Not that the rest of it didn't sound desperate.

Shit.

He gets out of the car.

«»

When Sam wakes, it's to Crowley. The way his left arm is sliding sideways says Crowley is sitting on the side of his bed.

"How's my Moose?" he asks.

Sam's mouth is more dry than he had estimated. "I thought you weren't gonna call me 'Moose' anymore," he croaks.

Crowley smiles, an old, trouble-making smile. Then he's up and out of Sam's vision.

"Up," he hears after a minute, and his arm is being used to haul him upright. Crowley has him sit against his stack of pillows.

"Everything's hot," he observes aloud. The pillows and bed where he's been lying are too-warm and uncomfortable. "Where's Dean?"

"Outside with his old friend, angst."

"Angst," Sam repeats, blank.

"He's fine. Drink this."

He accepts a glass of water with both hands because neither one on its own feels up to holding much of anything. But he doesn't drink. He looks at Crowley as closely as he can.

There's a chair beside the bed that he's settled back into. He rolls his eyes. "I'll get Dean for you if you finish the water."

Crowley won't take the glass back until Sam drinks it all. He just sits and eyes him like he ought to know better. Sam works on it for a while. It tastes plain, nothing in it. He's heard Dean, like it was through a fever dream or something, but he heard him and Crowley. He knows they're back home. Is pretty sure this is real. Has plenty of experience with hallucinations. But just in case, he puts the glass between his knees and presses his palm, hard as he can, thumbnail into the old scar line. Nothing shifts or shorts out in his vision. He picks up the glass and keeps drinking.

"What's gonna happen?" Sam asks after a couple silent minutes. He can't tell if they're awkward. It's strange, in itself, that the King of All Hell is hanging out in his room taking care of him. It's stranger that he's being trusted enough to be left in a room alone, without Dean. And stranger still that he looks so quiet; borderline serene.

"Not entirely sure. We're gonna work on finishing what the spell wasn't intended to do."

"Which is?"

"Purge Azazel's little 'gift' from your blood. It's right up in your texture, though. It's in your meat and bones, Moose. It's what's made your skin so long and your legs so tall. It's rounded out that lovely arse of yours."

Sam blinks long and slow. He doesn't especially have the energy to wade through the personality and politics behind everything Crowley says right now. If he just decides to let it slide like normal, like it's not even funny, then what was left in that message?

"The demon blood," he says.

"Cookie for you," Crowley nods. "You're a little more conscious than I was giving you credit for. What with the English comprehension and all."

"Please talk slower," Sam just says.

Crowley smiles all wide again and rises. "I'll be back in a tick. Don't attempt to move, that would probably hurt."

Sam hears a very distant whistle and tries not to care about anything. He puts the water glass between his knees again and attempts to shift over onto the cooler side of the sheets. That feels a little better. He drinks more of his water, too. It is room-temperature, but that's still cooler than he is right now.

When Crowley comes back it's with a coffee mug half full of tea. It's not the best-smelling but it also isn't awful.

"One thing I can assure you is that this will get worse before it starts to get better. For example," he waits, pointedly, for Sam to finish the water. When the glass is empty, they switch. Crowley takes the glass, Sam the mug. "You're gonna have to drink this hot stuff and get even more hot and then, when you're unbearably hot, you can go sit under the cold shower you great grease-ball."

"Then can I sleep some more?"

"No. Then you can drink the other half of this and then you can sleep."

"Why are you doing this?"

"Drink your tea."

"Why are you doing this?"

"To torture you. With tea."

"Crowley."

"So you can get better," he rolls his eyes.

Sam squints and shakes his head. "And why would you _care_?"

"Because you're the only one who can finish it," he says, and puts the glass on the bedside table for punctuation.

"Finish what? Finish the task?"

Crowley, hands in his pockets, looks down at him pityingly, like so many school councilors.

"You can finish it," he finally says. "You can fix me."

Sam doesn't know what to say to that. Dean wouldn't allow it, not on Crowley. That's the thing that would kill him and Dean still needs him. Dean said so.

"Where's Dean?" he asks again.

Crowley sighs. " _If_ I go get him, you have to finish that," points at the mug.

Sam sets to sipping and Crowley actually leaves the room to make good.  
Huh.

A few minutes later, Dean calls his name down the hall before he appears.

"Hey," Dean plasters on this awful smile. "Lookin' good, Sammy."

"Tch. Right," he feels his head loll a little and actually can't do much about it.

Dean sits down at his side, on the mattress. "Here," he takes the mug and sets it aside and goes about inspecting Sam's arms. Sam's a little stunned remembering what they looked like before.

"How long...?"

"Few days."

Sam looks up and Crowley is behind Dean, leaning against the doorframe. He confirms it, nodding and holding up three fingers.

"My arm was-- was _meat_." He remembers Crowley biting him, getting thrown around by Abaddon, slicing his palm open, taking blood out of himself by the vial. He'd been falling apart. But his arms look healthy as ever right now.

Dean's looking in his eyes, giving him the full field assessment. He frowns at the feel of Sam's skin.

"He's really hot."

"You ought to keep that kind of business between yourself and the fansites, mate."

Dean glares over his shoulder.

"He needs to finish that and then we can work on lowering his temperature," Crowley says.

Dean settles the mug back between Sam's palms. "Alright. Drink up."

Sam gives him this look like, _wow, we're really taking advice from Crowley, huh?_

Dean actually answers aloud. "He's got a plan. And he's got nowhere else to go. This is how we're doing it for now. I'm gonna get some ice. You finish drinking that." He addresses Crowley, "then help him down the hall?"

Crowley nods once.

Dean gets up to leave and Sam makes a weak grab for his hand. "Hey. Dean, wait. What about--"

"I'll only be a few minutes, alright." Dean could see exactly what he was gonna ask. So, of course, he bolts.

They watch him go and hear, a minute later, boots climbing the metal stairs up. Crowley sits back down to resume his vigil.

"Well-adjusted, that one."

Sam snorts. "He worries. Then he goes. It's Dean." He shrugs.

"Mm. Anything not to think about it."

Sam supposes he could mean any number of things by that.  
But. Probably...

"Has he heard from Cas yet?"

A single quirk of an eyebrow tells Sam all he needs to know.

«»

Hours later, Crowley comes into the kitchen at all the noise.

Dean is taking a meat tenderizer to the spare bag of ice he'd stowed in the freezer. He's really hauling off on it, hand gripping the top of the large bag, right hand hammering away, jaw clenched. Crowley just watches for a minute.

"What the fuck do you want," Dean growls the next time he stops for oxygen.

"For you to put on your big girl panties and start this fight."

Dean breathes heavily, lets the tenderizer clatter into the sink. He leans over the counter, only turning his head to glare.

"Tell me, truly, Dean, when does he _ever_ die?" Crowley crosses his arms over his chest and leans against the pantry door.

"Sam?"

Crowley cocks an eyebrow. "Is _that_ who you were weeping over?"

"I'm not weeping," Dean says.

"No. You're hauling off on things, storming out of the room when your brother needs you. You only wish I'd piss you off so you really had something to scream at. But there's nothing. Nothing you can do."

"Is this supposed to be _helping_ , 'cause--"

"Either one," Crowley says. "When has Sam ever died? When has _Cas_ ever died?"

Dean ignores the latter. Points toward the hall. "All I ever do is watch that kid die."

"Grating, I'm sure. Just as grating as never being able to kill the bastard."

"You think it's really the smartest move to remind me how much I wanna fucking slaughter you right now?"

"And ruin this lovely kitchen?" he continues without pause. "You've got work to do. You should have ripped the demon blood from him ages ago, from day one of finding it out you should have been working to reverse it. You've encountered blood binds before, surely. Done some blood spells of your own, slicing yourselves open all the time to summon _me_ , at the very least. If you're gonna get angry," Crowley points at him, "you little shit," he pauses to watch Dean clench his jaw as if he has any fucking options here, "then be angry at that child."

Dean finally turns to face him. "Child?" he repeats, terse.

"The child you used to be. The one who heard that Sam had demon blood and didn't work to fix it. Be angry at everything you were in the past if you want, be angry at your brother for being young and stupid. Be angry at your father for figuring it out and not lifting a finger to stop it. Charging you with it. Laying it in your hands and _leaving_. Be angry at everyone for every damn time they didn't know better but now that you _do. know. better._ it's time to stop hurling trash cans and bitching and go do _work_."

Dean sniffs. Folds his arms in on himself.

Crowley sighs. "We need information from the demons. And we need to know if Abaddon has a new vessel. What other forces she's raised and where they are, ideally. If you go out and bag a demon, bring him back, I can--"

"I'm not leaving Sam here alone with you."

Crowley curses silently. "Fine. We need to get Sam better, and then you can take him with you. I've looked through the books you pulled down, though. There are things missing, it seems? Anything you might have misplaced?"

Dean thinks guiltily of the stuff he'd abandoned at the church in South Dakota. He could go get it...

... which is a move that would _also_ leave Sam here with no one but Crowley.

He's already on to Dean, by the looks of him. His head rises expectantly, awaiting the revelation of where these documents and books might be found.

"Sam took them with him. He had them when he was doing the last trial. With you."

"Ah. So. Still two states away," Crowley nods.

Dean chews his bottom lip. If he drives super fucking fast--

Crowley rolls his eyes. "Give it a minute," and disappears.

Dean goes to the kitchen table where he'd left his jacket, folded up around the angel blade he'd taken from the car. He looks around him, all around him, gets to the wall, and leans against the concrete. That should at least prevent Crowley from popping up behind him with the demon-killing knife and just--

Crowley appears with a bundle of stuff in his arms. He puts down the books and files, sits down on top of it the bag Sam had abandoned, and from his back pocket, he pulls Ruby's knife.

He folds his hand around the blade and offers it to Dean, across the kitchen table, hilt-first.

Dean meets his eyes.

Crowley nods.

Dean takes the blade.

Crowley turns around and goes to dump and refill the kettle. In a few more minutes he's left the kitchen to resume his watch over Sam with a new cup of tea.

Dean's so fucking tired. God. He hasn't slept but a few hours in all these days. Can't leave Crowley the way he is, roaming freely about the bunker. But he also can't help the way he can tell that each chant, each incantation and candle, makes Sam a little better.

Crowley is out of options. Crowley is _really_ out of options.

That doesn't bode well for their impending demon hunt. But now they've got a witch in residence, seeing to the stitches of spell work that are holding Sam together.

Shit. He could really get some sleep. He could put the ice back away for Sam's next fever spike. He could check on his brother and lie down on the couch with the tv blaring so it looks like he's still up. And he could just drift off. Get some rest.

But the books are right in front of him now. And there is work to be done. They could fix Sam, for all time. Fix him right.

He picks through the bag only half-interested. Sam's cell phone slides to the bottom. It's dead when he pulls it out, so he heads down the hall, plugs it in, ignores Crowley, musses Sam's hair, and heads back out to the main room.

Before he settles on the couch, he pulls out his phone again. Checks it. Nothing. Sets it aside.

Fuck, but he would love to be in his bed, his _real_ bed, just down the hall, and fuck this charade. But he can't trust Crowley that much yet. He sets some alarms on his phone. He'll get up every two hours to check. But he can sleep some. For now. While Sam heals, he's got the time.

«»

Cas wakes on the motel couch.

That was _not_ comfortable.

Beds are much better. But, of course, he didn't pay for the room. Cane got the bed because he paid for it.

He may be stiff in some places, but he's rested. That's what matters; being alert, being ready.

Coffee may help on that front. He sees there is a coffeemaker in the room and gets up to try and make it work. Plugged into the wall beside it is his cell phone. Cane must have hooked it up for him. He doesn't remember being very useful after beheading his sister last night.

He carefully pulls it off of its plug and lights up the screen.

Messages. There are messages. Holy shit. The same unknown number several times, all over the span of about a half hour yesterday evening.

He dials into the voicemail and puts it to his ear as he heads for the motel room door.

_"Where are you? Jesus, Cas, call me. Where are you. Cas, you've gotta. Sammy's in bad shape. If you. If you've got anything,..._

Cas hangs up and dials this new number for Dean.

«»

A shaking wakes him. He tries to reach under a pillow that isn't there for a gun that his hand won't find.

But when he cracks one eye open, it's only Sam.

Shit. _Sam_. Up and around. _Moving_.

"Hey," Sam says. Dean sits up quick and scoots over on the couch.

"Hey. You good?"

"Almost. For the moment," Sam collapses right onto the seat next to him and holds out his cell phone. "Voicemail, man. You've gotta hear this."

Curious, Dean takes Sam's phone and dials in to listen. Six new messages.

 _"It's Castiel. Sam. Or. Well. When either of you get this, call me. Something's happened. As I suppose you've seen."_ His breath huffs into the phone, like he's climbing. _"Not sure yet where I am, but I've found a road. Please call. Or. Something._ He gives up. _"I'll try you again later."_ Hangs up.

Dean's eyes are wide and Sam only nods at him.

 _"Next saved message,"_ the automated voice says, just as Dean's phone starts to ring and vibrate across the table next to him.

Dean grabs for the phone as Crowley enters the room with Sam's laptop and sets it on the table. Dean answers, says 'hello.'

"Dean," Cas says, a burst of air over the line. "Good. Good."

"Cas," he answers, turns back to Sam. Sam gives him a weak smile and pats him on the back before Crowley gets in front of him to motion him back away. Sam hauls himself up with an effort and goes with Crowley.

"You're alright."

"Yeah. Cas, man, where the hell are you?"

Castiel huffs a little laugh. "Canada," he says a bit ruefully. "Outside Saskatoon."

"Holy shit."

"Yes. That."

"Well," Dean resettles himself on the couch, leaning forward, attentive. "Are you okay? Are your powers gone? We saw some of the others. They were. Cas, they were pretty messed up. It's chaos out there."

"Yes. I know. Stick to the bunker, Dean. You both should stay out of sight as much as you can. Protected. How is Sam right now? Is it much worse?"

Dean swallows. Tries to decide in a split second whether or not to say anything about Crowley.

Because, you know, obfuscating. Lying. Avoiding things. That's gotten him so far in the past.

"Sam looks a little better today. We're working on it. He was just letting me hear your messages when you called. He can walk now, at least. It was pretty bad there, for a while."

"Alright. Okay. Well. As for that. I can't offer you much, Dean. I can try to help from here, but. The Metatron. He took my powers directly. He used them to seal our fate, to force us out of heaven. It's my fault. You were-- I should have listened, Dean. I should have--"

" _Should haves, Cas,_ " -- Dean is very firm here -- "Should haves are nothing. You hear me? This. All of it, alright. Look. I couldn't let Sam finish the last trial, either. But it's what kept him alive. If anything, Cas," he scrubs his eyes. "Cas, you gotta believe me: I'm grateful. If doing it up right meant you were stuck up there. And. And you died. That's not an answer, Cas. I should have stopped you before. That wasn't an answer. And we still don't have much in the way of answers right now, but we'll get there. It's fine. We'll work on it."

Cas is silent. Dean knows it will take more convincing which is something he doesn't quite have the energy to do over the phone. "You've just gotta believe me for now. Just accept it as step one and use it to start walking home, got it? This. ALL of this. We _will_ **figure. it. out.** If you're not willing to believe anything else, fine. That's fine. Just do me the favor of telling me why to my face. Here. In Kansas. Get here."

Dean can hear a car hush by on Cas's end. "I can't 'zap,'" he says at last.

"Alright. So that's out. So, hold on," he grabs the laptop Crowley left. "I'm gonna pull up your GPS."

"And I can't help with Sam, Dean. I have no idea how. I couldn't before and, well. Now. Definitely not. I've got nothing."

"No. I know you've got something. You just. We'll put our heads together and we'll work through it better when you're here." Cas slips back into silence which isn't promising. "Alright, look. We're working on this theory. It kinda fits. It has to do with the demon blood-- with the blood. Inside of Sam. That Yellow Eyes infected him with, you know? It was like the trials were cleaning that out of him. Sam even felt it. Said he felt more pure than before, went on and on about it and Crowley said it, too. That when Sam injected the blood during the trial and whatever that it didn't taste so much like Sam was infected with it."

"The blood," Cas repeats curiously.

"So do you know anything about unbinding blood?"

"Only standard blood spells or common ties. Destroying the originally procured blood is usually the first step."

"You're saying Sam had to have some taken from him for Yellow Eyes to bind him?"

"As Azazel was possessing Mary Campbell's father and made the deal with Sam's mother, that's about as bound as you can get, Dean. That's closer than anything. He had the blood in him at the time the deal was sealed. He had the blood that flowed from Samuel to Mary and into Sam. But I don't know how that could be unbound unless the holder of the original contract can be made to destroy it. Then typical unbindings could remove what lasts of the infection."

Dean sighs. "Yeah. Yeah, I think that's the lines Crowley was thinking along."

"Dean. I'm getting the impression here that Crowley still lives."

Dean thinks a minute. Opens and boots up the laptop. Blessedly, Cas lets it go in favor of fretting again.

"There are. There's more you need to know about what's going on out here, Dean."

"You mean besides the fact that we've still got demons to contend with and the angels all just landed in smoking heaps on earth? Wow. I can't wait."

Cas sounds just about as enthused. "So far every one of them I've come across personally has taken exception to me surviving the fall. They're not happy about that."

"Let it go for now, Cas. You know what? I think, in time. Well, at some point they're probably gonna have to turn to you. I know you've been human and kinda-human and everything in between for a combined total of maybe a few months time, but that still gives you more experience than the rest of them. Some of 'em have gotta come around."

"Maybe," Cas concedes firmly, like he seriously doesn't wanna talk about it. "The problems I'm referring to are a little more immediate. Yesterday, for example, took a turn for the worse. I was in the middle of a small town fighting a skinwalker. He barged down Main Street as a rather large _grizzly_ and then changed into a man in sight of every civilian in the vicinity. Then he tried to kill me. Just came right at me."

"WOAH. Woah. You're saying. Are you saying what-- Cas. I'm. Uh. If I'm getting this right -- and god I hope I'm not -- one of your brothers landed here and decided to become a fucking _skinwalker_ rather than live out his days as a human being?!"

It's Castiel's turn to sigh. "They are more powerful than typical humans, Dean. I imagine more of my family will turn to a change of species rather than attempt to live in this weakened form."

Dean needs a minute. He either needs to go get Sam to listen to this insanity or, like, time to adjust or something. Time to berate himself for not turning on the news more often. But he can't deny that, no matter what happened out there, he needed to be by Sam's side more. Once Sam is better they can take care of all of this.

(But, _Cas_.)

"Where are you?" Dean breathes, "I'm gonna come get you."

"No. No, it's fine," Dean holds tight to the phone, can almost hear Cas wetting his lips on the other end to continue. "This hunter, I've been helping him. He was looking into the sudden appearances, the violence. I offered my assistance and he has given me some food, allowed me to sleep here. We're driving south. He fabricated a passport for me. I can cross the border myself. There's no need for you to risk being seen coming into the country."

"Well, I'll meet you. I'll meet you, where are you getting in?"

Cas sighs. "If Sam is immobile, if he's ill, it's important that you stay with him. I know you want to stay with him, Dean. I'll be fine. I just. Well. I could use some money. For a ride or... however I can--"

"Minot. Look, if you're coming down through North Dakota, make it into Minot. The airport's there, I can order you a rental car. You'll pick it up. What's the name on your ID?"

"Um. Cas Campbell."

Dean pauses. Laughs. "Wow. Not bad. Cas Campbell," he shakes his head. Well.

"I didn't--" Dean can hear him stepping into the wind, maybe out of earshot, dropping his voice. "I didn't tell him anything except I was working with some hunters, some of the Campbells. He knows _what_ I am."

Dean pauses in opening the browser. "Cas, is he dangerous? I mean. Are you sure he's gonna let you get over the border?"

"I'm not concerned," and he clearly tries to sound it.

"Gimme his name."

"You probably haven't heard of him, he only works in this country."

"His _name_ , Cas."

"Cane Bergell. Honestly? My guess is he's from an old witch family. The Bergell name was once very honored. They were quite skilled in creating charms."

"Yeah. Yeah, Bobby had a couple old books by some Bergells. Listen, Cas: If he tries to pull anything, if he-- I donno. Tries to keep the passport or he decides you're too dangerous to let go. Just. Run, alright? Look, you got a pen or something?"

"No."

"Get something to write with, okay? Write my new number down so you have it. And the bunker number. If you need to get out, we'll figure out a way. I'll come get you."

"Dean--"

" _I'll come get you_. It's alright, Cas. How much did you give him for the ID? I don't know how much it would run him to get papers for you up there..."

"Uh. He didn't charge me anything. I've got no money. I couldn't pay him."

This worries Dean. Nothing ever comes free. Certainly not in their circles.

"What do you mean, he didn't charge you?"

Cas is speaking into the wind again. "We ran into... others. So many. I had planned to hand over the blades I'd collected from-- there were others. I had to fight them when I first fell. I. I had two swords and."

"And you were gonna give him them to pay your way. But he got more?"

"Four, now. But, um. Something has been bothering me about it."

"Yeah?" Dean goes to their cell company's website and types in Cas's number while he talks. It takes a minute to pull up his exact location.

"The last of my sisters I faced was last night. She'd sought out a vampire and had herself turned."

"Like the skinwalker," Dean says, and holy fuck that is dreadful. What else have they seen that can turn you with a bite? There will be more werewolves walking around. All it takes is a few weeks eating human flesh in the dark to turn the right man into a wendigo. They'd seen a human turn into an arachne in Rhode Island. If they were soldiers themselves, aware of all the other evil things in the world, a lot of these ex-angels could willingly turn themselves into monsters of all stripes. Eve left a lot of funky things in her wake. They're _still_ cleaning up after her.

"I destroyed this vampire, beheaded her. But before that I stabbed her. I didn't think anything of it when taking out the skinwalker. A knife to the heart, there's silver on the blade, but there was no _energy_ to it. Then with the vampire-- Dean, one stab should have stopped her, but I had to completely behead her to end the fight."

"Wait. Are you saying they're not supercharged anymore?"

"Like _us_. We had the power to summon our blades in our former forms. I think the power has left the swords as well."

"Shit. Well. Good to know. At least we've still got the demon-ganking knife. But, uh. Look. If any of 'em come after you, you talk fast, alright? Don't mess around. If you even suspect, start spouting an exorcism, alright? Don't wait to find out if they're affected by the blade."

"I know, Dean. But I already told Cane. And he has four of them now. He thinks they'll stop demons because I said so."

Fuck. "Don't say anything," Dean orders. "If he shows up to a demon fight just relying on a sword he's never used before, that's his problem. You tell him anything you've gotta tell him to get you out of Canada, you hear me?"

" _Lie_ , you mean. To a _hunter_. Dean, the lives of others could depend on this. More people could die because of _my mistake_ \--"

"No, nuh-uh. Stop it. You don't even know for sure, you just _suspect_. And how are you supposed to know, anyway? You haven't come up against any demons yet."

"Not yet."

"Well, don't," Dean says, like everything moves out of Cas's way at his command. "Get your ass down here. Wake him up and get on the road."

"I don't know that he'll drive me past the border."

"He's got to. It's in the middle of nowhere," fuck that. Dean can see Cas's exact location on the website right now. " _You're_ in the middle of nowhere. Don't let him leave you like that."

"And how do you suggest I convince him to take me as far as Minot?"

"I don't ca-- I don't know. Information exchange. Write out an Enochian spell for him. Something. If all he'll take is cash, well. Shit. I donno. Call me back and I'll see if I can wire him some, alright?"

Cas is silent for a while. "Sam will be alright. Take care of him. You're doing fine. He'll be okay."

"He'll be better when you're down here and we've got our heads together figuring this out. We need you here, alright?"

Cas takes a deep breath on the other end. "I am relieved to hear you say that."

"Christ, what else am I gonna say? Get your ass home," another command, though it comes out sounding more pleading than he'd like. "Keep your phone charged. Call me, alright? Before the end of the day? And when you get into the States? And when you get to Minot, alright? I'll tell you how to get here from there. It's easy."

"I haven't... uh. Driven. Very much before. I tried it. When Daphne--"

"It's easy, you'll do fine. Pay attention while Cane drives and just do like he does. And don't hit anything."

"Yes. Alright."

"You can do that."

"Yes, I can."

Dean can't think of anything else to say. Cas doesn't have any more information for him now. And he's too far away to do them any other good. He can't think of what else to _say_. And he doesn't want to hang up.

But. "Listen. Uh," he closes his eyes, envisions Cas on the side of some road. Nowhere, Canada. "Look. This will go faster if you just, you know, get Cane in the car. Get him to drive. Just get you here as fast as he can. Just, you know. Go. Now. And start making your way."

"Yes. Yes, I know."

"Alright. So. I'll talk to you later. Right?"

"Yes. Later. I _will_ call."

"You better. Okay. Careful, Cas."

"You, too, Dean. Be careful."

Dean hangs up. Cas will call again. Just a few hours. He's alive. And he'll stay that way. He said he would. He has to call.

«»

After gathering clothes and deciding that everybody could identify as whatever gender they pleased (or didn't care to at all, in Meb's case), they decided to max out one of Meb's credit cards on bags and food. Like, a LOT of food. Though before paying, they went and gained another mouth to feed.

Kevin was drawn to the camping section at Wal-Mart. It wasn't like he was gonna buy a gun or anything but he did expect to find something that would help keep them alive. And, indeed, he found Mathravash, Angel of the Lord (former). She was sat in one of the tent displays waiting for them. She expected that, soon, her family would find her and she would help to bring them into the light again.

In the mean time, she had been closely evaluating all the products on display around her and determined which would best assist in survival. "Though this environment seems rather inhospitable. We seem to be surrounded by desert."

"I don't like it here. This is not a very good place for us," Sahara had chimed in.

Luckily, Mathravash, or Math as she had consented to being called, Had A Plan.

He liked her plan. But he thought it might be refined at a sporting goods store or something.

Math smiled from where she huddled in her green tent. "That is why you are the prophet," she said, extending her hand. He lifted her to her feet and they went to check out.

In the colossal long line to pay, introductions were made, then the angels who needed new clothes went to the restroom and changed.

Kevin felt like a tour guide trailing them all outside with their rolling suitcases.

In the parking lot, Math veered off to the left. A man sat against the building with his legs out in front of them, one completely covered, toe to thigh, in a cast. She introduced him as Oel.

Yeah. Much more of this and Kevin was really gonna have to do a head count every time they left a building.

Neither Math nor Oel had identification, but Math had a little money that she'd used to feed the both of them. Oel, looking pathetic against the wall, had some coins people had dropped for him, much to his confusion.

Oel also had a perfect view of the entire parking lot and pointed to the back of the lot where a green and white RV sat. "No one has come in or out of it for two days. They had bags across their backs and they left," Oel pointed to the hills beyond.

"They went hiking," Kevin interpreted.

"They left it. Now we can use it."

"Woah, woah. No grand theft auto guys," Kevin declared.

"They are not using it," Meb said.

"We have work to do," Sahara added.

"We have to save them," Math declared again. "Our family needs us. We will go wherever we must. We will settle where we can."

"You guys aren't getting it," Kevin says. "The camping we can do. There's plenty of world out there for you guys to travel and you can camp all over the place, but if you steal that huge thing," Kevin stabbed a finger in the direction of giant RV they'd singled out, "someone will follow you. Police will track you. The people who own it won't let you just leave and take it wherever. They'll tell _the authorities_ that you took it and follow you and when they catch you with it, they'll put you _in jail_."

"They aren't using it!" Oel repeated.

"Doesn't matter. When they get back, they'll want to use it. And you'll have it. And they'll be pissed. Guys, you don't own that thing."

"We should," Yasgood said. "We should have one for ourselves. We could travel in it and shelter others. Send our brothers and sisters home when they have places to go back to."

"Alright," Kevin agreed. "Alright. It's a good plan. But after a few months, they'll have moved on," he pointed all around him. "Like you guys have. So what then?"

"Demons," Lek stepped forward to speak at last. "The demons still scourge this earth and they will think they're getting away with it, because," she shrugged, picked at the material of her new jeans, "we are here. They will expect us to do nothing. To be weakened."

"We're not weak," Meb said, and looked it, in the ankle-length skirt and v-neck Meb had picked out, work boots still peeking out from beneath the soft wave of the skirt. Determination was written across Meb's face, arms crossed, stance solid.

Kevin stood in the midst of them, arms stretched wide. Like. What??

"You guys, you're not hunters. You're in human bodies. You should find a home or, I donno, maybe you could build one or work to earn one but. But you can't do this."

"You want us safe," Lek approached him with a hand reaching out to steady him. "But we were not built for safety. We are soldiers and protectors. The answers to prayers." She stroked a hand down his arm to calm him. "Kevin. This is the life we wish to live. What is the life you wish? If you will stay in one place and be safe, we will send our family to you to keep. If you will fight with us," she smiled, "we will be happy either way."

What he wanted was a perfect shot at his safety school and a decent shot at Princeton. After that all he'd wanted to was to be left alone. To maybe mourn his mother and pick up the pieces and disappear into a world where you didn't get tortured by demons. Now he is surrounded by ex-angels with blind faith in him and he maybe wants to enjoy that. To set them in a straight line and show them how, it turns out, there's no one, single, _right_ way to be human.

The money will run out one day, and the luck will. And maybe then he will be trailing a tour bus packed full of angels back to the bunker in Kansas or running some hippie commune where no cats are allowed because cats freak Sahara out and Araz won't stop trying to make friends with everybody in visual range. Maybe they'll all come to their senses and get apartments and he'll hop an international flight away from all this mess.

And the angels who landed in Australia will just follow him with their hopeful eyes.

There's no right way to do this.  
That's a really big fucking RV. He bets the pretentious bastards who bought it have enough to buy another.

He is right. It's got a bath tub and a king-size bed in the back. Yasgood sits co-pilot while Oel gets carried aboard. Araz and Lek discover reality programming on the tv in the small kitchen. "We need a patron saint of troublemaking or something to hotwire this beast," he says.

They've got knives and an eight-man crew.  
Eight _person_ crew.  
Well. They figure it out.

«»

Against Dean's better judgment, Sammy rides shotgun and Crowley rides in the back. He chain-smokes for a while with the window down when Sam falls asleep and when he wakes up again, Crowley takes Sam's hand over the seat to keep on with the recharging and spell work.

They're headed to Raton, New Mexico where demonic omens and murders popped up so fast a hunter called in to warn them. All the news on tv has been about the fallen, the 'lost,' showing up with strange names all over the world. This was the first they'd heard of the demons having a gory free-for-all.

Silently, Dean counts the hours since he's heard from Cas. He and Cane had started off as soon as they could but ran into more trouble along the way. Dean warned Cas not to get used. Cane isn't his partner, he doesn't know enough about Cane when it comes right down to it, and he has to watch his own back.

Since then? Nothing.

He doesn't lay that on Sam. Sam's got enough to deal with, but it's like back when they were starting each leg of the trials. They got a lead and suddenly Sam was at least 50% better. _Begging_ to go. Doing research, hogging all the Internet, making calls and tossing off fake badge numbers to get what he needed.

He tried to recruit Crowley into getting him to calm it down, but the little shit had only shrugged and looked on, like, _what can you do?_

He glares at Crowley in the rear-view now. Suit impeccable, beard growing out again. Winking at him.

Fucking.  
Fucking fuck.  
Goddamnit.

So the plan is to keep Sammy sidelined for as long as it's possible to do so. Rope himself some demons and bring Sam and Crowley in on the questioning. He doesn't think it would do for Crowley to be seen any more than he already has been. Last time he'd popped out to get himself a tin of tea or something he'd come back with his friggin' jacket _on fire_ looking just _incredulous_ about it.

And Sam wants to have Dean's back, he knows he does. But Crowley was right. They should have thought of this years ago. Sam shouldn't have had to go through life thinking he was scum, right down into his core. Freaks they may be, _both of them_. But Sam is always so ready to love and trust it's fucking ridiculous. Dean's already noticed the quiet language, the back and forth of penance and acceptance between Crowley and Sam. He gives everyone a chance and Dean's not fool enough to say it's just because he gives every _demon_ the benefit of the doubt. It’s just Sam. It's like he knew before. Like he knew when Dean had to go and get the information out of Ruby. That all demons are human somewhere inside there. That they all started off that way.

He doesn't want this to bite Sam back, to brutalize him further. He's falling apart just fine on his own.

Dean resists the tug of his own fraying, the litany of worry that's splintering his own concentration. Yeah, he's got enough to worry about Sam, too. Cas is alive. Cas just needs to stay that way.

Cas needs to stop fucking around and start driving south.

Meanwhile, the road takes his own car west.

«»

This is Cane's last stop before the border. Not because Cane wouldn't drive him as far as Minot. Cas really hadn't had the time to plead his case, between one distraction and another.

Cane won't make it into North Dakota because no matter how Cas holds his hands over the bleeding gash in his throat, he won't stop bleeding. There is no light for Castiel to share, no healing touch, only the hopeless patch of flesh pressed to flesh. Blood seeps between his fingers, too, and there's no light for Cane to share with him, either, as he passes out of this world, hot on the heels of Kamael, his brother, who had been stuffed into the form of a small human child.

With one jump out of the dark and a slash at Cane's throat, Kamael had ended him.  
Likewise, Cas had seen fit to end Kamael.

Much to his shame, only after offering to help his brother. Swearing that, if he could change everything, he would give his _life_ , oh _brother_.

That was folly, though. There was no promise in there. Cas is a creature just trying to inhale and exhale through every moment of life, just like any other.

Life wins.

And of Cane's life. Well. Perhaps a Bergell will come to claim him one day. Track him down and avenge what happened to him. So could any other being, it seems, come to seek redress for Castiel's pretensions. He's valued his own self over so many other lives.

Soaked in Cane's arterial spray, he wonders at what point people ever decide to give into it. He waits for the tug and hasn't felt it yet. Has worried he would harm himself, and hasn't, other than always stepping in his own messes.

He steps out of this mess, now. He is not far from the road and he can't haul out and burn the bodies without being seen. He discards all his own clothes and tugs on some of Cane's, a respectable but too-tight plaid and jean ensemble.

It's actually not far, now. He lifts the loose liner of the truck bed and slides the last of the weapons into the grooves there. With everything hidden, he returns to Cane and his closed eyes. Takes his keys, his money.

Life wins.

Cas drives south.

At the border, he tugs the collar of Cane's shirt high over the finger-shaped bruises that still linger from his skinwalker attack. He pastes on a smile and glances at it in the rear-view mirror. Tries for a softer smile. One that tries less to be genuine. And he's there. Cas Campbell. Canadian citizen in a borrowed truck, come down to visit his sick brother, Sam.

At the border, there are two agents handling sparse traffic. Cas doesn't respond to the agent's critical eye. He knows what it is to look strange, feel strange.

He thinks maybe everyone feels stranger than they let on all the damn time.

After all, he's been human on a few occasions. The feeling has never stopped.

He's waved into the United States without further inspection. He's cutting it close for gas but pulls over at the first station he sees and they help him with his little foreign currency problem. Whether he stops there or not, he's pretty sure it's a straight shot down to Minot. He pulls his phone out to ask Dean about it.

And technology has finally failed him. After all this trying, after all his persistence.

Kamael had swung the butt of his blade back in a punch to Castiel's middle. He remembers not feeling it and thinking it was just Kamael's size, his inability to put force behind the hit.

The screen of his phone is completely caved in.

So maybe he'll get really good at asking for directions over the next couple days.

«»

Crowley notices immediately, but over the hulk of Sam's shoulder and the pain in his own head from getting thrown around by demons for two whole days, he kind of doubts that Dean does.

A faded tan pickup truck under the shade of trees at the far end of the clearing around the bunker's base.

Crowley readjusts around Sam and earns a haggard little huff and a "really?" from Sam when his hand lands on his ass.

"You think this is easy, hauling you around?"

"I would never call myself easy," Sam returns.

"The fuck, guys, seriously," Dean gripes, trips, almost takes a header down the stairs.

Their mission to shake down a bunch of demons had been less than successful. All they managed to get was that, yes, Abaddon was in indeed in the process of raising her lieutenant to help her spread chaos and, yes, Raton, NM, was most likely a massive distraction.

For his part, Crowley learned some rather interesting things about the way his chain of command disintegrated in his absence. Abaddon would raise her captains and fellow knights in due time. But while she went to work, lesser demons were running amok. And frankly? Crowley couldn't be arsed.

It would be a balls-out lie to say the inheritance of command hadn't worn on him. And not being in the Winchester's sights as a target, at long, long last? It was all a goddamn relief. He'd never felt so at ease. Playing nursemaid to gigantor was barely a burden. First, it had gone from quiet to morose. Sam had been asleep at first, Crowley working in silence with the elder Winchester all on his back about it. Then Sam had had nothing to do, nowhere to go and he listened. Listened to Crowley's own confessions, the very few that he could dare make aloud. And from there? Well, it ran from amicable to outright flirty. It was a wonder.

Admittedly most of the flirting was him being bored out of his mind. But the bonus was how it grossed Dean out when Sam didn't give him an ugly eye for it. Only _laughed_.

That was it right there. Far from a resolution. Just settling in to the first chapter, in fact. Crowley suspects he's still got much more time than other mortals. Time for Sam to fix him permanently. Or time to worm his way back to the dark side. Who knows?

"Try not to hit your pretty head on the doorway, darling," he says as he helps Sam duck inside the bunker.

"Fuuuck," Dean grouses, picking up slack on Sam's other side.

«»

As they trip into the bunker, Sam's endless arms and legs drag and fall between Dean and Crowley. After the stairs, they switch up, Crowley taking more of Sam's weight, Dean nudging Sam's feet into the right place. Sam throws himself all over Crowley, fingers hanging onto his jacket for dear life. Crowley laughs at him a few times and Sam laughs back like they're just drunks stumbling home.

Half-way down the hall to Sam's room, Crowley loses grip and Dean catches Sam again, hauls him up more and keeps trying to troop him forward. "You realize this would have been easier if he grabbed the ankles and I got the wrists, right?" he grits out.

Sam only laughs at that, too. "Sorry." He doesn't sound sorry.

"Whatever."

They finally get Sam hauled into his bedroom, and then flopped on his bed. They're all breathing heavy for a minute. Dean finally slumps forward to get Sam's shoes off. He sets them aside and then Crowley is batting him away. He watches him move up and brush the long hair off Sam's face, helps arrange Sam on the pillows.

"Go. Enjoy your surprise," Crowley says.

Dean gusts out another breath. "What?"

But Sam is asking Crowley questions in a low tone and Crowley is shaking his head and rolling his eyes at him all good-naturedly. He pulls out the basin, the blessed blade, matches, a candle, thumbs through some pages of spells until he pulls out the right one. Then he just sets to work fixing Sam up again.

Well, okay.

Dean meanders off, down toward his own room.

He flips the lights on to reveal Castiel.

Soundly asleep. Completely conked out.  
In _his_ bed.

Dean feels his ass slide down the door jamb and feels himself hit the floor numbly, as if viewing himself within the whole scene, from the corner of the room.

Cas didn't cover himself up with the sheet or heavy blanket. In fact, it almost looks like he collapsed sideways and just passed the fuck out.

He's scraped all to hell, knuckles raw, throat bruised in rings, his elbow purpled from a violent blow, breathing audibly.

He is wearing Dean's fucking _clothes_.

Dean's hands fall limply over his knees before he blindly reaches back and pulls the door shut behind him.

Cas's breathing cuts off when the door shuts but resumes a minute later, still snoozing. 

Holy fuck. Dean could beat him bloody right now. Pound his guts into the sheets and suffocate him with a fucking pillow. It occurs to him that he could also crawl into the bed with him. Shove his hand up under his own shirt -- on _Castiel's body_ \-- feel Cas's human heart beat, feel all the new unsteadiness of him, the quiet thrum of life.

Holy _mother of fuck_.

He certainly doesn't think about rolling Cas onto his back and straddling him and sucking the fading marks on his neck until he wakes up and then possibly handcuffing him to the bed in the unsexy way so he can never leave again. It's only a flash of a thought and he's fucking exhausted.

Dean wants two things: To either shake Cas awake and bitch him out or go get coffee and definitely not sleep in his own bed.

He's quieter with the door this time.

When he's in the kitchen, nursing a super dark cup of mud, Crowley eventually re-emerges.

Dean stares at the tile backsplash. Dean doesn’t ask. But Crowley reports anyway.

"He's asleep. I've got some spells set in. He'll be better in the morning. Then we work on it more."

He speaks to Dean's back and there's no response.

Crowley shrugs.

"I take it we're still internalizing our desire of good things in favor of feeling awful. Very constructive. Happy to take residence with such a _progressive_ group of lads."

"This isn't your fucking residence," Dean mumbles over the rim of his mug.

He hears Crowley huff behind him. "We'll hear what _Sam_ has to say about that," he replies in this petulant, I'm-momma's-favorite kind of way that has Dean glaring over his shoulder at him.

"You know, like a _week ago_ you killed this chick he liked and left her kid _without a mother_."

"And _you've_ killed a woman he admired. And he's killed _most_ the women he's slept with. Sam's got perspective, I assure you."

"What the fuck," is all Dean says before turning back to staring blankly over his coffee.

Crowley kicks his feet into another of the kitchen chairs and eases back where he sits.

They're both quiet for so long that Dean feels it creep up his spine and into the backs of his eyeballs until he turns to take Crowley in again.

But he's still just sitting there, looking off out of the entry to the kitchen, cool and relaxed.

"What," Dean demands.

"Not taking the bait, mate. Lecture yourself I don't give a toss."

"Lecture myself," Dean repeats.

"Yes, on the merits of keeping your cool, remaining a sober pinnacle of calm in the maelstrom of emotions between yourself and the man you wish you were boinking."

"Shut your fucking shit up, Crowley," he says, more tired, despite the coffee.

"Let's start from the top. You're insecure in your own sexual identity which stopped being a problem for me, oh," Crowley squints and thinks, "well. 'Round the time I sold my own very desirable hindquarters to the pit. It _is_ , for the record, both a matter of the equipment _and_ how well you use it, by the by," he notes with an eyebrow waggle.

Then he closes his eyes and drops his head over the back of the chair.

"So I don't know where those insecurities come from anymore, I really don't. I can't relate. I see no problem with you and Cas being lovers. I know of more than one person-- more than ten, really, loads, who already assumed you were. Tempestuous though you may look. And Castiel, for his part, very clearly knows what it is to want you deeply. To love you, it's likely. It's _your_ interest that's questionable because it seems to hinge entirely on whether or not you can deal with your partner's genitalia and wow," he looks back up at Dean, pointedly. "Just how shallow _can_ you get? Lots of people look down on you for that. I'm not the only one in that, either--"

"Fucking tell me what I really care that _you_ , of all murderous bastards, are looking down on me."

"Oh. Yes. Except, that's one protest too many from someone who doesn't think anything of me."

Dean straightens entirely to stare down at him.

Crowley drops his feet and scoots back.

"I look down upon you for it," he repeats. "You're a Shallow. Bitch." He pauses just to make it entirely clear. "Consider this a sound rejection of your pathetic instability. And if the messenger should negate the impact of the message, then I expect you'll sit right there for half the night," he points at another chair at the table, then to the doorway, "and take up the couch for the rest. Enjoy proving me right," he sneers. "I'm sure it's what you live for."

Dean didn't undress from the hunt. He's still stacked with all the weapons under his coat and in his pockets. Used to their weight against his skin, held fast under the band of his belt.

There is no help in the world worth putting up with this fucking asshole. There's no reason he ought to have to live in the same building as this murderer, this torturer, this shit-eating know-it-all.

He can get Sam some help elsewhere. Shit, Cas is here. Cas can set to work on him.

He can pop a shot off in Crowley's dome right now and it would probably take the fucker out. He doesn't have much juice left anymore. Not enough to boil a kettle of water with a touch. Not enough to push a bullet out of his own skull.

"You can stand there and try to burn holes in me with your thoughts, angst away the rest of the night. Bury me out in the woods," Crowley says, still rocking that sneer. "You could also stop being as small as everyone expects you to be. You can grow into what you've been for years but refused to settle into. Stop being a slave to your own grief. Trust me, no one cares about it except you."

The way his eyes flicker past Dean, in the direction of the hall, indicates what Dean truly fears. That even Sam's over his shit. He's confiding in this twisted jerk and even he has lost enough interest in the show Dean puts on to camouflage his heart that he's rolling his eyes behind Dean's back. Sam’s waiting for Dean to be secure enough in himself that he can bolt. Build a life outside this two-member family and its oft-mocked air of heavy dependence.

Mostly on Dean's part.

Crowley's opinion means more than it should to him because Sam is beginning to value Crowley.

He would hate to prove Crowley right. And he's clever enough to come up with his own solutions.

Dean dumps the rest of his mug in the sink and drops the cup there in the basin. He leaves Crowley in the kitchen.

First he peeks in on Sam. He really is out like a light but it's different this time. His color is coming back. He looks a little less worn.

Dean doesn't want to linger, will _not_ be around Crowley right now, and he can already hear the next in an endless string of kettles being heated back the way he came.

He's gonna walk right by his own room. Off into another wing. There's this soundproof room with foam or something all over the walls. It's down in all the other practice areas, near the gun range. The door is wide enough to roll in one of the cots down there. To take up a new space in the bunker for now.

And that's his intention until he sees the light on in his own room. His heart jumps because he can't remember if he left it on. If he didn't then Cas is awake in there. Maybe sitting on the edge of the bed waiting for him. And he's not ready to hear that yet.

He goes forward, anyway, and into the room.

Cas hasn't moved. He must have left the light on himself.

Good. Good, right. Good.

So. Well. While Cas is still out, he can just. Well, he can grab a few bags full of his clothes and leave him to it. He can move his stuff downstairs. Maybe come back and reclaim the memory-foam mattress one day, switch it out and let Cas claim whatever space he wants.

Right.

(He can't reclaim all of his clothes. Cas is wearing some of them--)

He stops himself from closing in on the bed. His feet were carrying him, not his guts, not his mind.

He doesn't _know_ if he wants to share space with Cas right now. Any space. There's still so much Cas has done. Things that should be unforgivable. Choices he made _for them_ without fucking asking. Without considering Dean a concerned party.

And he doesn't know how much sleep Cas has had. Cas in puny little Jimmy's body. He trekked down from fucking who-knows-where. He's exhausted, completely out of it, with his empty hands curled in front of him on the mattress as he sleeps on his side.

Dean turns away, closes the door behind him to shut out the noise of the kettle whistle.

He opens the closet and grabs a couple empty bags. He opens some drawers, stacks clothes from them inside the bags. When the drawers clatter a little, he doesn't look up. Both wanting and not wanting the noise to have awoken Cas.

When he finally does look, there's still no movement. Cas is completely still on the bed except for his breathing.

The bags sit at his feet and really, nothing is that far from anything in this room. One step is all it takes to bring him to Castiel's side. He knows what he's doing as he puts his hand out and what it does is curl around Cas's upper arm, right at the sleeve of his ( _Dean's_ ) t-shirt.

It's probably what he wanted all along, he has to admit it; for Cas to wake up at the touch. What he didn't want were Cas's wide eyes, though, with their familiarity and shot through with a little fear. Or now, especially, Cas's tentative touch up the inside of his wrist.

So, because Dean still can't say anything and can't tell Cas what he thinks this is or what he thinks this makes them, he uses both hands to pull Cas's head from the pillow and raise Cas's forehead to his lips. It's not a kiss; he presses his mouth there, through Castiel's shocked stillness and through the burst of an exhale on his neck from below.

He turns, grabs the bags, and goes. What he doesn't want is to hear, behind him, the sound of Cas sitting up. If he could just lay back down and get some more rest, they could work this out in the morning. Or another day. Or let it keep existing and move around it like sane people who have had enough explosions in their lives.

It happens anyway. The memory-foam doesn't make a sound, it's the ancient bed frame that moves with Cas's shifting to a sit. All Dean has to do is turn the doorknob and leave and all at once, that was never gonna happen.

Against all fucking logic, like it's his fourth time winning the goddamn lottery or something. When nothing gets returned to Dean, when he's not allowed to keep anything but Sam, for some fucking reason, Cas got returned to him again. Cas keeps coming back.

He scrubs a hand down his face, kicks the bags to pile up against the door.

Dean turns back and pushes Cas back down to a sit and straddles him and pulls him forward by the neck. Dean tightens his thighs and breathes in Cas's mouth. Pushes forward to press Cas under his body and tries not to talk into Cas's mouth. Except that it comes out anyway, against Castiel's open mouth, "Fuck," and "Cas" and "Cas" and "Cas. I thought you died."

Castiel's fingers dig, without their old power, into Dean's thighs and the pressure is delicious. His fingers crawl up to Dean's ass to pull them together and that's it, that's all, that's all there is.

Dean is standing up and kicking off his boots and shucking his jacket and he manhandles Cas into place and pulls his shirt up to mouth at his center and his ribs and to smell under it, at Cas's chest where it smells not-quite-like the old Cas, a whole lot like the both of them together. When he falls to kissing over Cas's heart, Cas clutches his fingers in Dean's hair and keeps him in place. He feels Dean move his hands down his back, desperately clutching at lust, trying to keep it heady and fast, diving his hands into Dean's jeans that he's wearing and going to knead at the flesh of his ass and Cas kisses his head and finally says, "Dean." Same old voice. Same exact sound.

Steady and low. Everything that he is all over again, come back home to him.

And like that Dean is shaking and crawling deeper into his friend's arms and just holding on tight. There's too much saliva in his mouth when he gasps, "Where the fuck have you been?" Castiel is the one to pull him up and push him to his back and lay out over him, curling an arm around Dean's head and holding him. He pushes Dean's shirt up and caresses up and down his side, knowing he can touch and wanting to touch. He has been alone for a very long time and for touch to come at last, now, when he's human, is warm and right and satisfying and he doesn't entirely know what to do with it, but he knows where to start.

He covers Dean's body with his own and pulls Dean's arms around him and one of Dean's legs between his and the other thigh he pulls up and over his own. Dean rolls his hips into Castiel's and when Dean won't quiet, keeps up the slow, hot roll, Cas's fingers shiver over his belly and run through the hair there. Cas's nails feel teasing and good and he's kissing Cas's neck. He pulls his grip from the back of Cas's head and undoes his own fly and pulls himself out and pulls the orgasm out of himself with Cas's hand still there, trailing little lines of heat. Cas smoothes the warm come into his skin after, slower and slower, fingers dipping down to press and touch where Dean has touched himself, their hands between them.

Dean has no words for this, Cas covering his own hand in Dean's sweat and semen, mouthing at Dean's face and up to his ear. He turns Dean's head and kisses into his mouth. Dean fists a free hand in his shirt and pulls him closer, flush, gone on all of this. "You belong in my bed," Dean says. "You're gonna stay here. You're gonna live with us. This is us. This is family." And after a minute of breathing in Cas, he can't help but doubt it. "Right?" he asks.

Cas nods, nods and nods stronger and kisses him again. "We are, Dean. This can be okay. Well. This is all incredibly unlikely to succeed on any level. We're more likely than ever to die. The armies of each side close in on us daily. But yes." He pushes his fingers down into Dean's boxers and strokes his thigh.

Dean hitches a breath. "Oh, good," his voice is strained, "here I thought all that death and destruction was going to get in the way of the fact that I'm probably going to touch your dick." Castiel smiles into his skin and kisses his face again.

"You're not right now. You need sleep. I need sleep. My hand is sticky, give me your shirt."

"You already have my shirt," Dean says, a little dazed. Then, "be fucking civilized, there's tissues around there somewhere," Dean's elbow gestures vaguely in the direction of the nightstand without actually letting go of his grip on Cas.

Cas doesn't reach for anything. He keeps kissing Dean, touching him, running his fingers everywhere until Dean starts to move his thighs apart and think maybe Cas's dick will be the one doing the work instead of his own hands. Shiver of worry in him thinking about how Cas's fingers are trailing closer to his balls; thinking about the feel of fingers pressing into him. And he's not ready for it, but also completely unprepared to stop Cas from touching him after waiting so long for it. After knowing, _knowing_ Cas was dead for so long. Unable to give up the shock of touch no matter how it comes because he's done refusing it, pretending he could be okay without it. Fuck it, he's done _thinking_ about it. At this point he just wants it to happen to him.

«»

Crowley only knows it's morning because Sam stumbles into the kitchen.

He looks good if Crowley does say so himself. A solid 30% and climbing. Their little journey out to interrogate wayward demons hardly left an impact.

Sam blinks in the doorway and raises an empty mug. Kind of shrugs.

"Name it. You want the yucky tea or the good shit?"

"Umm," Sam meanders over, hits his chair at the table like a load of bricks. "Gimme. Uh. Gimme the gross stuff. It still tastes good when you make it."

"Right answer, sugarplum," Crowley winks. "The nasty tea will get you better faster. And that's what you want."

"And um. God. Do we even have food here right now?"

"I'll give you a box of cereal to stick your hand in, I'm sure your germ freak brother will appreciate that I fed you either way."

"Hah. Um. Yeah, but. I kinda want an egg."

"A whole egg," Crowley pretends to marvel with his back to him, heating the kettle on the stovetop.

"Um. Please?"

"Of course, pet. An egg. I can make an egg. It's not anything extravagant like -- fuck forbid it -- _toasted bread_."

He can _hear_ Sam's eyes roll. "Thank you, Crowley."

"You're welcome, pumpkin."

"Okay. That one was--"

"THAT one. 'Pumpkin' is crossing the line?" he pretends to glare as he crosses back through the kitchen.

Sam mumbles something.

"Oh, what was that," Crowley stops, puts a hand to his ear. "Oh, no, I'm definitely going to need that one repeated."

"I prefer 'Moose' to fucking 'pumpkin,'" Sam spits and then looks kind of disbelieving which is worth a deep, satisfied smile on Crowley's part.

After a while Sam accuses him of more transgressions which he simply _must_ deny to maintain his image.

"You helped Dean rope those demons in. You told him how to make them spill their guts."

"That wasn't me," he says with his back to Sam, working over the stove. "That was all Dean. I claim no responsibility."

He can feel Sam watching him the whole time, but it's not until Sam has his egg in front of him on a plate that Crowley sits back down with their tea and says, "it was like tasting your blood. You know," he looks a little distant. "Every word they gave us it was like a stab of the needle."

Sam chews carefully for a bit before he asks. "It felt good?"

Crowley shakes his head. "Felt right. Used to not concern myself with what that was like."

"You may end up on the end of Dean's nerves," Sam wavers a little, "or his knife. One day. But you know. Until then, I mean. You can't make up for everything. But there are points for trying. You could help us."

"I love how you never learn your lesson," Crowley looks across at him through half-lidded eyes. "All baddies get a chance with you, no matter how inevitable that it'll bite you in the balls come the end."

"Well," Sam stabs his fork into the last of the egg. "I keep getting chances. So."

"So," Crowley nods.

"I mean, you're no Bobby."

"Perish the thought, precious giraffe."

"But. You know."

Crowley sighs. "What I know is what you only suspect. Dean or his loverboy, either one of them is gonna string me up some day."

Sam looks a little confused. "Cas is back?"

Crowley only nods.

"Mm. Okay. You know, still. For as long as you're fixing me up, if anyone wants to get at you, they're probably gonna have to go through Dean first."

Crowley gets up for something to do. Takes Sam's plate and slides his tea closer. "Oh, my sweet ostrich, you underestimate me. I am _very_ good as far as spell craft goes. You'll be better before you expect it, I think."

Sam grabs his sleeve as he goes to slide away. Crowley pauses, obligingly. "Fine. Then maybe they'll have to go through me," Sam offers.

Hm.

"It's an everyday struggle not to want to make out with you, Moose." Crowley pries Sam's fingers out of their clutch on his sleeve and raises his hand to his lips, kisses his knuckles lightly. Yes, he can understand why Dean bends the world to keep Sam.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to the [Canadian](http://winteronthedragonstongue.tumblr.com/) [peeps](http://kaestiel.tumblr.com/) who helped with my questions. Any inaccuracies as far as Cas's journey there belong to me/are definitely creative license, yes, yes, definitely.
> 
> Did most of my writing while listening to [this interesting page](http://listen.hatnote.com/#nowelcomes,en) and [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kd-aL30Zhs4) (the title was also inspired by it).
> 
> There is a Sam/Crowley-centric follow-up to this fic, [Cinders Light the Path](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1006115).


End file.
